


Sarah Smiles

by Hypocorismm



Series: Where We Truly Belong [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Always a girl Stiles, Baking Stiles, College, Derek has feelings and doesn't know what to do with them, F/M, Female Stiles Stilinski, Isaac Lahey & Stiles Stilinski Friendship, Near Future, Stiles gets into trouble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-16
Updated: 2015-02-01
Packaged: 2018-01-12 15:49:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 46,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1190808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hypocorismm/pseuds/Hypocorismm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles was happy. She was dating Derek Hale, she’d been accepted to her top school, and for the first time since sophomore year, she was completely and truly happy. And then, Derek turns her world upside down, leaving Stiles stranded without an idea of where to go from here. So, she goes to college and attempts to leave that all behind her, and in true Stiles fashion, continues to attract trouble to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Derek kissed softly, like he was afraid to break her, like she was something precious to be treasured. He kissed like if he pressed too hard, she would realize what she was doing and would vanish. He kissed her with one hand curled at the nape of her neck, the other around her hip, her back pressed into the Jeep’s driver side door. Stiles wanted to warn him that her father was probably waiting by the door with his service weapon, and had been since they’d pulled up 10 minutes ago, ready to shoot Derek for touching his underage daughter. She wanted to, but she couldn’t bring herself to because Derek was kissing her, and she never wanted him to stop. Derek kissing her was the best outcome to any situation, but especially the situation where Derek took her to dinner and to a movie as her _boyfriend_. It wasn’t their first date, which had been awkward and full of Stiles’ awkward chatter, but had ended the same way with Derek pressing Stiles into her Jeep and making her weak at the knees. The boy knew how to kiss, and he used it to his advantage.

And Stiles loved it, she would do next to anything to keep them kissing.

Except that she couldn’t stop herself from smiling into the kiss, which was impeding Derek’s fantastic kissing skills just a bit and Derek’s shaking shoulders and little huffs of laughter also weren’t helping.

“Why are you laughing?” Stiles asked as she drew back, head _thunking_ against the Jeep’s window.

“I’m just really,” Derek trailed off. He looked over his shoulder as the door to the Stilinski home opened and the Sheriff stood in its doorway.

“Time to come inside, Stiles,” her father called. She sighed.

“I had a great time, Derek,” Stiles said with a smile at her boyfriend. “Thank you.”

“You should go before your dad shoots me,” Derek said with a small smile just for her. She wanted to wrap up in that smile and spend eternity with it. Stiles leaned forward and kissed the corner of Derek’s mouth.

“Goodnight, Derek,” she whispered before ducking out of Derek’s embrace and hurrying up the path to her front door, shifting her purse onto her shoulder from where it had fallen during the kissing. “Hi Dad.”

“Did you have fun, Stiles?” he asked. The Sheriff, Stiles had to admit, was trying to accept that Stiles was dating Derek, because she would be 18 soon and then he would have no say. He was trying, and had set only a handful of rules for Derek and Stiles to follow to the letter. Stiles was proud of him. This was progress.

“I did, thank you,” Stiles said, still grinning as she tugged her father inside the house. She glanced over her shoulder to see Derek leaning against his car, waiting until she was safely inside. She wiggled her fingers at him in a wave and shut the door with her foot.

She was happy. She was dating Derek Hale, she’d been accepted to her top school, and for the first time since sophomore year, she was completely and truly happy.

 

-&-

 

She called out a goodbye to her dad as she bustled out the door.

“Where are you going dressed like that?” he called back from the kitchen. Stiles looked down at her outfit, a sheer white tank top over a light blue bra and a light blue skirt that fell to just above her knee with a pair of sandals.

“I’m just dragging Derek with me to shop for dorm supplies,” she said, leaning against the door frame as the Sheriff stepped into the hallway, giving her that Sheriff look. “I told you last night.”

“I thought I wasn’t going to have to worry about you dressing like that,” the Sheriff said. She shrugged.

“If it makes you feel any better, you now have proof that I’m a normal teenage girl like you’ve been hoping I’d be.”

The Sheriff just gave her a flat, unamused look.

“And I’m about to drag my boyfriend around stores for hours, making him carry my stuff and not have any fun at all?”

He smirked at the thought.

“Alright, just, be home for dinner.”

“Will do!”

She skipped to her Jeep, patting her old metal exterior lovingly as she climbed in. She hadn’t exactly told Derek what her plan was for the day, because she doubted she could actually get him to go shopping with her if she gave him advanced warning. No, Stiles’ plan of attack was more guerilla warfare, to pounce and surprise him with the day and then guilt him into going.

It was how she got her father to try the new organic, vegetarian restaurant in town, and how she got Scott to spend the day with her rather than ogling Allison. It was Stiles’ secret weapon.

She drove without thinking, taking the familiar turns without having to really concentrate. She didn’t want to leave Beacon Hills. Okay, well, that was a lie. She needed to leave Beacon Hills, but she didn’t want to leave her dad or Derek or the rest of the pack. They’d become important to her, even the stupid twins had gotten under her skin in the last year and a half. She didn’t want to be apart from them even though she knew it was for the best that she got away from all of this supernatural bullshit. She needed a normal life, away from the werewolves, away from crazy hunters, away from kanimas, away from Darachs, away from everything that had dragged them down in the past two years. She didn’t want it, but she needed it. She was a smart enough girl to recognize that this shit was not healthy, and unlike the rest of her friends, she had an out. She was just a human, after all. She didn’t howl at the moon every month, and she didn’t belong to a family of hunters, and she couldn’t sense when someone was about to die. She was just Stiles, and just Stiles could get away.

She hadn’t realized she’d just been sitting in front of Derek’s building, Jeep idling in its parking spot, until someone knocked on the window. She flailed and squeaked in surprise, turning to find Derek at her door. She shut off the Jeep and tugged her keys out, letting out a slow breath before getting out.

“You okay?” Derek asked, leaning against the car with his arms across his chest. Stiles took a second to just appreciate because after all of their stupid dancing around each other, all of that beautiful werewolf was hers.

“Yeah, I just got thinking,” she said, grabbing his arm and dragging him into his building.

“What about?” he asked.

“College, mostly, and how I’m going to miss Beacon Hills and the pack and you, my dad,” she replied honestly as they got into the elevator. It was old and made the most hideous of noises but Stiles refused to walk up the five flights of stairs to Derek’s loft. She refused. “Hell, I’m probably even going to miss Isaac’s fucking scarves.”

Derek snorted. “No, you won’t.”

“You don’t know, I could.”

“You could, sure,” Derek replied. “But you’re not going to. You _hate_ Isaac’s scarves.”

“It’s not my fault that they’re dumb! It doesn’t even get that cold here; I don’t understand why he needs to wear them all the time! What even is the point?”

“He’s hiding his hickeys,” Derek deadpanned as they reached the fifth floor.

“Werewolves heal, they don’t need to hide hickeys,” Stiles replied.

“Not if they’re given to him by an Alpha.”

“Shut up, Scott is not giving Isaac hickeys,” Stiles said with a snort of her own, shoving Derek out of the elevator and toward the loft. “Is he?”

“No, but it’s fun to get you all riled up.”

“You suck,” Stiles giggled. Derek smirked and pressed her against the wall beside the door to the loft.

“Not yet,” he murmured against her ear.

“Oh, god. You can’t just say shit like that, Derek,” she whimpered as he pressed wet kisses down her neck. He simply hummed and continued his path down to her exposed collarbone.

“I like when you wear this,” Derek said, tugging at the material of her nearly see-through tank top. “And that skirt, Jesus Christ.”

“Thought you might like it,” she said, gripping his hair as he pushed her tank top up away from her stomach. He kissed down from her ribs to her hips, sucking lightly. “Ma-maybe we should move this inside the loft!”

“I’m the only one on this floor, Stiles,” Derek reminded her, skimming his hands up her bare legs while he sucked gently on one of her hip bones.

“Yeah, but I would feel a lot better if we weren’t about to be walked in on by the pack, or your land lord,” Stiles gasped out as Derek’s hands drifted under her skirt. “Please.”

He stood up and pushed open the loft door, backing Stiles through it. He kissed her before slamming the door shut. He went to lock it when Stiles grabbed his arm.

“You’re sure no one is here?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“How sure?”

Derek sighed but humored her by calling out, “If anybody is in this loft and doesn’t want to hear Stiles and I having gratuitous sex, I suggest they leave!”

There was a clatter from outside the loft and the stairwell’s door slamming open and quickly slamming shut.

“Satisfied?” Derek asked, latching and locking the door.

“Very, but now I expect you to deliver on this gratuitous sex you’ve promised the world.”

“Oh, trust me,” Derek growled playfully, bending down slightly to scoop Stiles up by the back of her legs. “I am going to.”

He carried her up the spiral staircase to his room, laying her out on the bed and hovering over her.

“You’re okay with this, right?” Derek asked, kneeling between her legs. She stared up at him, watching as he dragged human nails down the outside of her thighs. She tried not to shudder, tried not to whimper excitedly. “Because we’ve never, and I know you’ve never so I don’t want to make you do anything that you aren’t ready for.”

“You’re such a gentleman. How does a ball of angst and dry wit be this nice of a guy?” she asked, carding her hands through his hand. He had amazing hair, soft and clean.

“Stiles,” Derek mumbled, leaning into her touch. “Do you want this?”

“Of course I want this. Of course I do,” Stiles replied. “But, my dad would kill you, and then me, and then you again. And I’m kind of attached to you, so I don’t want that to happen.”

Derek hummed in agreement.

“What do we do, then?” Derek asked, biting gently on the inside of her knee. She gasped and arched her back. “Because clearly we both want this.”

“Clearly,” Stiles echoed. She knew how much she wanted this, so undoubtedly Derek could tell she wanted. All Stiles had to go on was Derek’s pupils blown wide and he kept shuffling closer to her, as if magnetically drawn to her. “I hate California’s age of consent. Fuck, I hate it so much. I just want you to fucking touch me without it being against the law.”

Derek nodded, frowning. She hated it when he frowned like that. She sat up and pulled Derek into her lap, straddling her hips as she threaded her hands through his hair. She tugged him closer, as close as she could get him, and kissed him, slow at first before deepening it and opening his mouth wider with her tongue. While they hadn’t done anything sexual, they had done a lot of making out in their month or so together. They were still clumsy, still figuring each other out. They sometimes pulled too hard or bit too rough, broke skin when they didn’t mean to, left bruises that weren’t supposed to be left. But they were learning, and Stiles had already figured out how to make Derek arch into her and Derek had had Stiles panting into his mouth more than once.

“On my eighteenth birthday, I am coming out, and you are fucking me, I don’t care what other plans we have, that is happening, you, me, this bed, and no clothes for the entire night, birthday sex, that’s what I want,” Stiles said into Derek’s mouth.

“Fuck,” Derek groaned, ducking his head and burying his face into her collarbone. “You really can’t say shit like that.”

Stiles smirked.

“While we’re on the topic of things I probably shouldn’t say right now,” Stiles said.

“Oh god, what?”

“I have to go shopping for school stuff.”

“Okay?”

“And I kind of told my dad that I was dragging you along, so we actually have to do that today.”

“ _Stiles_.”

“I know, I know, but I wanted to spend the day with you and wear my skirt for you so I had to come up with something. Also, I really do need to start shopping for supplies. I leave in like 3 weeks.”

He frowned again.

“Oh, hey, I know it’s a touchy subject, but it’ll be okay,” Stiles said, reaching up to smooth the crease between Derek’s eyebrows. “I have my own car so I can come home whenever I want so you can see me all the time, and it’ll be fine. I won’t meet anyone else, and we’ll get through it.”

Derek looked down at her, those beautiful hazel eyes searching her for a quiet moment.

“Besides, I have no doubt you’ll be on campus being a protective ass anyway so you’ll just scare off any potential suitors with your eyebrows.”

“My _eyebrows_?”

“They’re very intimidating.”

He kissed her to shut her up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks go out, immensely, to Meredith for beta'ing some parts of this! She's just a doll :)  
> Kudos, comment, share, subscribe, bookmark, all those things if you liked it, please!


	2. Chapter 2

“Scott, buddy, you should really pick up your phone when I call you!” Stiles panted into the phone a day later, bursting through a bush in the forest. “Because it could be an emergency! WHICH IT IS, YOU FUCKFACE!”

She hung up and dialed Derek’s number, cursing as she leaped over a log. She shouldn’t have gotten out of the Jeep. She should’ve just kept driving. She was going to be in so much trouble and there was no one to blame but herself here.

“Stiles? Why are you calling me at 3 o’clock in the morning?” Derek grumbled.

“I really don’t have time for that right now!” she yelped, looking over her shoulder at her pursuer. He was getting closer, eyes glowing bright in the dark woods. “Just find me, please!”

“Where are you?”

“The Preserve, the far side near the highway.”

“Why the fuck are you in the Preserve at 3 o’clock in the morning?”

“Can you yell at me later when I’m _not_ about to become wolf chow?”

“I’ll be right there.”

The line cut out and Stiles shoved her phone into her pocket, darting between trees. She wasn’t sure why the werewolf that was chasing her wasn’t catching up, but she wasn’t about to question it. She just wanted to put as much distance between her and the werewolf as possible so maybe she stood a chance at seeing the sun rise.

She ran hard, putting all those cross country practices and lacrosse sprints to use. She pushed herself harder than she had in a while, feeling the burn in her muscles, the ache in her bones, but not allowing herself to stop. She was just a girl, just a weak human girl, but she was not letting herself be caught in a forest when she could keep going.

Stilinskis are stubborn, she reminded herself. Stilinskis do not back down.

Of course, Stiles was unfortunately, stupidly clumsy at inopportune times and ended up face planting into the forest floor, ankle twisting uncomfortably underneath a tree root.

“Shit, shit,” she growled, scrambling to free herself from the tree. She could hear the wolf getting closer, his breathing as labored as hers, his strides uneven. He was hurt, and Stiles was still going to die. This is how she was going to die, caught by a damned tree with a deranged, injured werewolf stumbling after her through the forest.

Stilinskis do not let themselves get eaten by stupid injured werewolves at 3 in the morning.

If she was going to die in the Preserve, she wasn’t going to do it lying down.

She wriggled her foot from under the tree root and pushed herself up, limping away as quickly as she could. It wasn’t broken, probably just twisted but it still hurt like a son of a bitch.

She heard the snarl of her pursuer feet from her followed by a different, more familiar growl in response, and then a heavy _thud_ echo through the forest. She turned to find Derek perched on top of the very unconscious, possibly dead werewolf that’d been chasing her.

“Derek?” she called out quietly. He nodded, standing up off the werewolf’s chest. “Is he, is he dead?”

“No, he’s alive. We should go.”

“What if he comes after the pack?” Stiles asked as Derek loped towards her. He cupped her jaw in his hands, holding her still without answering her question, looking her over to assess any damage. “Derek, what if he comes back? What if he brings his own pack?”

“Stiles, what were you doing out here?”

“I was, I didn’t mean, I was just going to the store. Derek, what if he comes back?”

“It’ll be okay. He was an omega. He didn’t have a pack. What happened?”

“I was going to the store, and on the way back, my headlights must’ve caught his eyes because they reflected back, so I slowed down. And I don’t know, I thought it was a hurt dog, I guess. So I got out.”

“Stiles,” Derek groaned, pressing his forehead into hers. “Don’t ever do that.”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. It’s been so quiet around here that I let my guard down and then I realized that it wasn’t just a dog and then it was chasing me and then Scott didn’t answer his goddamn phone because he sucks and I’m sorry.”

“You’re okay, that’s what matters,” Derek said gently.

“You’re sure he was alone? I mean, not that I was scared or anything, but,” she started. Derek cut her off with an amused chuckle.

“He was alone. He’s not coming back. It’ll be okay. Let’s just get you home, okay? You’ll feel better in the safety of your home.”

“Okay.”

“Which way is your Jeep?”

“Towards the highway? I don’t know which way that is, because I kind of serpentined my way here, and I wasn’t paying attention to cardinal directions either, and I also fell, and then turned around, and my ankle- which has nothing to do with my sense of direction- is all fucked up, and you totally are walking already. Why are you walking away?” She watched as her boyfriend walked away through the forest, without her. She let out a grumble and began stumbling lopsidedly after Derek. She followed behind him at a slow pace, until she’d had enough. “Hey asshat, some assistance would be appreciated.”

Derek turned and just fixed her with that _look_ coupled with the single quirked eyebrow, and she wanted to punch him. She wanted to punch him most of the time, and dating hadn’t changed that in any way. She just wanted to kiss him as often as she wanted to punch him.

“Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. Fucking Derek Hale, acting all innocent with his face and his eyebrows.

“Like I’m some weak little girl and you can’t imagine why you put up with me every day.”

“Stiles, if you want me to give you a piggyback ride, just say so. Don’t try to pick a fight.”

Stiles chewed on her lip, ‘cause yeah, that’s exactly what she wanted.

“Give me a piggyback ride.”

Derek walked back, stupid arrogance in his gait and bent down in front of Stiles, baring his back for her. She wanted to be an ass and poke him in the sides, because believe it or not, Derek was extremely ticklish, but she also just wanted to go home and curl up in her bed with some ice on her ankle. Tickling could wait. She hopped onto his back, wrapping her legs around his waist and securing an arm around one of his ridiculously broad shoulders.

“Hey Derek?” she asked as he carried her easily like she weighed nothing.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

He turned his head to look over his shoulder at her, smiling ever so slightly. She leaned into him and kissed the corner of his mouth before he turned back. They didn’t talk on the way back to Stiles’ Jeep. In fact, Stiles pressed her cheek into Derek’s shoulder and dozed off, the ride surprisingly smooth for a piggyback ride. She used to get piggyback rides from her father when she was little and then Scott when he’d shot up taller than her, but as soon as she grew to the same height, piggyback rides were less common. Although, sometimes when Stiles was feeling particularly lazy, she could con Scott into giving her one, because he was a big strong werewolf now.

When she woke, she was in the passenger seat of her Jeep and Derek was driving down her street. She blinked blearily at the street lamps and looked around.

“I fell asleep on you,” she finally said as Derek pulled into her driveway beside the cruiser and parked.

“You also drooled on my back.”

“I did not!”

“Stiles, there’s a mark on my shirt that says you did.”

“Derek, I do not drool.”

“Is this like you not snoring?”

“You are such a liar.”

“Stiles, you drool, and you snore, and you kick me in your sleep, and I don’t mind in the least. You’re intrusive-“

“ _Hey_!”

“-when you’re awake. When you’re asleep, it’s no different. I’m used to it.”

“You’re _used_ to it?”

“What? Is this the part where I confess that everything you do, everything you say, and every moment that you are awake, you are adorable to me? That even though you have now drooled on not one but three of my shirts, and you have managed to bruise me with your flailing limbs seven times since we’ve met, that I still like you anyway, because I thought that was evident by the mere fact that we are dating at this current moment.”

Stiles looked at Derek through narrowed eyes and didn’t respond.

“Stiles? Have I upset you?”

“I don’t know how to respond to that. It sounds like you’re mocking me.”

“Does sound that way, doesn’t it?”

“You’re an awful boyfriend. Why am I dating you?” Stiles shot back. He honestly smiled in return.

“Because I do actually find your drooling and snoring and kicking me when you’re sleeping adorable.”

“What have you done with my boyfriend? My boyfriend doesn’t have emotions. He doesn’t find anything adorable.”

Derek rolled his eyes and shook his head, huffing out a laugh.

“Go inside, get some sleep, Stiles,” he said, leaning across the space between them and kissing her gently.

“You have to walk home, seeing as this is my Jeep. Wait, where’s your car?”

“I couldn’t find my keys.”

“You ran from your loft all the way to the Preserve.”

“Yes.”

“You _ran_ all the way to the Preserve.”

“Yes?” Derek repeated, unsure this time.

“Dude. You ran from one end of town to the other to save me.”

“Yes, Stiles. That is what I did. Why are you so surprised?”

“Because you were in such a rush to get to me, you said fuck driving and then ran to me. You, I will take back anything I’ve ever said to insult your person.”

“No, you won’t, and I don’t want you to. Just, promise me that you won’t do anything stupid like get out of your car at 3 in the morning on the side of the highway ever again.”

Stiles grinned.

“I suppose I can promise that.”

“Good. Now hurry up and get inside before your dad tries to shoot me.”

“Dad’s asleep.”

“That’s what you think,” Derek said, handing Stiles the keys to the Jeep before getting out of the driver side door, and disappearing into the night. Stiles rolled her eyes and got out of her own side, swiping her bag of chocolate ice cream and Fritos from the floor at the last moment. She’d been chased through the forest and nearly been eaten, managing to injure herself in the process; she was getting her damn chocolate ice cream and Frito fix.

 

-&-

 

She texted Derek the next morning, just a simple, customary **thanks for saving my life :)** and then another about an hour later asking if she’d see him today.

She didn’t receive a response to either one.

She fielded a freaked out phone call from Scott as soon as he remembered to check his damn phone, demanding to know if she was okay, and if she was, what the hell was that about.

“I’m fine, actually,” she said, washing her bowl and spoon from her breakfast, phone wedged awkwardly between her ear and shoulder. “Derek came and rescued me. It’s alright. I’m in one piece.”

“What the hell were you doing out that late?”

“I needed chocolate ice cream.”

“And Fritos?”

“You know me so well! Yeah, so anyway, I did a stupid thing, and I was already berated for it. Save your Alpha routine, and come over to play some Xbox with me before I leave for school in a couple weeks.”

“Stiles.”

“It’s a touchy subject, I know! It’s a touchy subject for everyone that I’m leaving and moving 3 hours away without taking anyone with me for protection, so I don’t want to force you to talk about it, Scott, but I do need to spend time with you before I go. You’re my best friend, bro, and we are not coming to the end of August without having me thoroughly beaten your ass at every video game that we have in our possession.”

“As if you could.”

“Oh, please, Scott. You becoming a werewolf helped you not one bit on the video game front, so you can stop acting like you’re better just for the sake of your pride.”

He made an offended noise into the phone.

“Are you coming over or what?” Stiles demanded, grabbing the sponge and wringing it out before wiping down the counters and stove.

“Give me an hour. I’ll be there.”

“Better be, McCall, or I will beat your ass myself. No video game involved.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Scott chuckled and hung up. Stiles went back to cleaning the kitchen. She’d picked up the habit right after her mom died, and she couldn’t think of anything else to do. She cleaned. She made the house spotless, just like her mom tried to keep it, because her dad and her had let it get rundown while Claudia was in the hospital. So, she cleaned. And it became a nervous habit.

Derek often came home to find his loft sparkling, which irritated him.

Even Melissa would come home after a long shift to find that Stiles had been there, all of the dishes washed and put away, the laundry done, books put back on the bookshelf. Those times were normally right around finals, and she was grateful for them.

When Scott showed up an hour later, Stiles was showered, dressed in sweatpants and a tank top, and the entire house was spotless.

“Wow,” Scott said, setting his bag down by the couch, looking around. “Did you dust?”

“Yeah, I might have.”

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing, can’t a girl dust without needing to have a major life crisis.”

“Sure, but not you. You’re not a random dusting kind of girl, Stiles. What’s going on?”

Stiles sighed dramatically, turning on the couch to face Scott, ankle aching slightly as she did.

“I’m leaving and moving 3 hours away without taking anyone with me for protection,” she said.

“Stiles, you’ll be okay, you know that. You’re intelligent, you’re resourceful, and you will be surrounded by people that can help you.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about, Scott,” Stiles admitted. “I’ve never been on my own. I’ve always had you, or I’ve had Dad, or you know, whatever. I’ve never had to fend for myself.”

“You have a meal plan, so you don’t have to make your own food. You have scholarships out the ass, so you don’t have to worry about working to pay your tuition. There are showers, and a laundry room in your dorm hall. You’ve known how to take care of yourself since you were 8, Stiles. College is no different, really. You will be fine.”

“But what if I’m not?”

“Then you can come home,” Scott answered simply with a shrug. “Stiles, you can _always_ come home, no matter what. It doesn’t matter if you’re too stressed over college or you’re being hunted down by zombie witches.”

“I don’t think zombie witches are a thing.”

“Or, smart ass, if you just miss us. You can come home, and we will be here for you.”

Stiles launched herself over the arm of the couch at Scott, catching him in a hug. He laughed and held her close.

“I’m gonna miss you.”

“More than Derek?”

“More than Derek.”

Scott grinned into Stiles’ neck when her heartbeat didn’t falter. She would miss Derek, and she would miss the entire pack. But Scott was her _brother_. They’d known each other longer than Stiles had wanted to marry Lydia. They had been best friends since the moment they saw each other, and life just wasn’t real unless Stiles could talk to Scott about it. There was going to be a piece of her with him for the rest of her life, and she would miss that piece for as long as it was apart from her.

It was safe to say that out of everyone in her life, Scott came second only to her dad, and she would always miss him more than she would miss her boyfriend, or girlfriend, or whatever significant other she had. She could never tell Derek that because underneath Derek’s leather jackets and undeniably sexy scruff was legitimate feelings that Stiles was trying her hardest not to irritate, hurt, or disturb in any way.

“Always more than Derek.”


	3. Chapter 3

Two days passed, and then two more, and there was not one reply from Derek. No text message, no call, no smoke signal, no carrier pigeon, no candy gram, nothing. Literally nothing.

And Stiles was simultaneously angry and worried.

Mostly angry.

“Hey Isaac,” Stiles said, swinging into the loft late on the fifth day of Derek’s silence. Isaac still lived with the McCalls, taking up residence in their guest bedroom, but he spent most of his time in the loft with Derek, that is when Derek wasn’t spending his time with Stiles. “Where is he?”

Isaac opened his mouth to respond.

“And don’t you dare lie to me, Isaac Lahey, because I do not have time for this and I swear to god, that fur coat we talked about sophomore year that I would give to Lydia will happen.”

“Must you threaten him every time you talk?” Peter’s purr came from the staircase. She turned to glare at him.

“You don’t get to talk about threatening anyone, Peter Hale,” she shot at him. “Now tell me where my boyfriend is before the coat is made up not one but two werewolves.”

“I never thought I’d say this but you’re actually quite scary when you’re angry, Stiles. Derek is upstairs,” Peter said, stepping out of the staircase just as a _thud_ came from upstairs. “Come along, Isaac, lest we be subjected to a lovers’ quarrel.”

“Good luck, Derek,” Isaac called out cheerfully, heading out of the loft after Peter, sliding the door shut behind them.

“Do not make me come up there, Derek Hale. You will not like me if I have to come upstairs to do this,” Stiles demanded loudly. Derek would’ve heard her if she’d spoken softly, but Stiles wasn’t really in the mood for speaking softly, or appealing to Derek’s superior senses. After a moment of no movement from upstairs, Stiles growled, heading for the stairs. “If that’s how you want to do this, then _fine._ I don’t know if you noticed, but we’re dating. I know you’re not the best at this, and no one expects you to be with your history, but I’ll give you a tip. Dating means actually texting your girlfriend back, or at least letting her know that you’re alive. It does not mean hiding out in your loft and avoiding her for whatever dumb reason you have made up. It does not mean you get to ignore me without at least telling me why you’re mad at me!”

She got one foot on the bottom stair when Derek appeared at the top and slunk down, shoulders hunched like he was trying to fold in on himself.

“What do you want, Stiles?”

“What do I- Jesus Christ, did you listen to my rant right there? I want you to text me back, asshole. I want you to call me, or drop by, or at least send Isaac or somebody to tell me that you’re alive. We lead dangerous lives, Derek, if you’ve failed to notice. You can’t just go incommunicado because you feel like it!”

“Stile-”

“No, you don’t get to just fucking _Stiles_ me in that goddamn tone of voice and have this be okay. You haven’t talked to me, or hung out with me since the day I got chased in the woods, so no, you don’t get to just silence me with a _Stiles_ and pretend like we’ve never even met!”

Derek was just shaking his head.

“Will you say something? Because I’m starting to get the impression that you don’t want to date me, which is ridiculous. Isn’t it?”

Derek took her arm gently and led her to his couch, sitting them both down.

“There’s a reason that I haven’t been returning your calls,” Derek said softly.

“I should hope so,” Stiles replied, willing her voice to stay even.

“Listen, I- this shouldn’t be this hard.”

Stiles stayed silent as Derek wrung his hands together, looking like he wanted to bolt rather than have this conversation.

And then, this resolve settled over him, his face hardened, and the Derek that Stiles had been dating was gone. This was the Derek from two, three years ago. This was Derek who had just lost his sister, and was lost, all alone. This was the Derek that Scott and Stiles had stumbled upon on accident in the woods while looking for Scott’s inhaler.

“This was a mistake. We never should’ve started dating. No, don’t look at me like that, Stiles. It was. You’re too young, and you said it yourself, danger follows us everywhere, and there are dozens of reasons why we shouldn’t be together.”

“Or, maybe, you’re just afraid of getting hurt, which I understand. But can’t you just give us a chance before you condemn us?”

“Stiles.”

“Don’t you dare Stiles me right now, Derek Hale. You promised, you promised you would try, and you promised that you wouldn’t fucking freeze up on me again, and here you are, breaking your word! Are you that afraid of being close to another human being that you cannot actually let yourself be happy for more than three seconds?”

“Who said I was happy?”

Stiles stood, stunned. Had he ever said he was happy? She assumed. Of course, she had assumed. And for the first time in quite a while, Stiles was speechless.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, willing the tears to stop burning in her eyes. She would not cry over this man, not today, not this time.

“You should go. It’s late. Your father is probably expecting you home.”

Derek stood and walked away, broad shoulders no longer hunched but held back almost proudly.

“You’re a coward, you know that?” Stiles snapped as she headed for the door, hand resting on the edge of it. “You push anyone away that cares about you, and then you make us feel horrible for trying. When you wind up alone, remember this is your fucking fault.”

 

-&-

 

Stiles shut off her phone, turned off her computer, and sank onto the couch with a half-gallon of chocolate ice cream and big bag of Fritos. Her dad trailed into the house, all of the lights turned off except for the television and the light over the kitchen sink, after his late shift. He sank onto the couch beside her.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” she said flatly.

“Stiles, you’re staring at the menu screen of Star Wars, and not even one that you like, what’s wrong?”

Stiles blinked and looked up at the television. She’d meant to get up and put in the next disc, but just never got there. She had started with the classics and had moved onto the newer, inferior trilogy but after the first couple minutes of the Phantom Menace, Stiles just couldn’t move.

“Derek broke up with me,” Stiles said quietly, scrubbing her hand through her hair. She pulled her hand away to realize that she had just smeared chocolate ice cream and Frito grease through her hair, and that she didn’t care.

“Oh, kiddo,” the Sheriff sighed, bumping his shoulder into hers. “It’s going to be okay.”

“I know it is, but it just doesn’t seem that way right now,” she said, leaning into her father. He lifted his arm and let her rest her head on his chest, hand curled protectively around her shoulders. “And I know you didn’t like him, but I, I did. I liked him a lot, Daddy.”

She didn’t call him Daddy often; she was a grown woman and she called him Dad, and when she called him Daddy, it was because the world was just too much for her, and she needed his comfort.

“I know, baby,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “Listen, you’re going to have your heart broken a lot.”

“God, I really hope not,” she whimpered.

“You are a strong girl, Stiles. You can decide who you have in your life. Fuck anyone who doesn’t want you in their life, and fuck anyone who treats you bad, and fuck anyone who breaks your heart because they’re all just losers who are definitely _not_ worthy of your time. Your time is precious and the only people who deserve it are people who treat you right and are nice and don’t lie to you and buy you ice cream. Okay?”

Stiles let out a thick laugh full of tears and buried herself into her father.

“I’ve never heard you swear that much,” she commented.

“I don’t want to hear you using that language, unless you’re telling someone to fuck off.”

“Sir, yes, sir.”

“That’s my girl,” he muttered. “Now, pass those Fritos and ice cream on over to your old man. I need some comfort too before I drag Derek Hale into the station.”

Stiles snorted but passed over the junk food. She would reprimand him later. She just wanted to stay here, curled into her dad like she was a little girl again.

She just wanted to lock herself away, and forget anything to do with Derek Hale.

That, unfortunately, included the pack.

Stiles didn’t call any of the pack, and she didn’t text them, or smoke signal them, or send them a carrier pigeon. She went radio silent, and started keeping her window shut and locked, despite the heat. She ignored the knocks on her door, ignored her dad telling her that Scott or Isaac or Lydia were here. She locked her door, shut her blinds, and ignored the world. She went about readying herself for college, spending most of her time with her father at the station, and buying supplies for her dorm that she had missed early in the morning before any of the pack even rolled out of bed.

“Stiles, you should at least talk to Scott,” the Sheriff said a week after while she was cleaning the kitchen again. She did that a lot.

“Don’t, Dad. Because with Scott comes Isaac. And with Isaac comes Derek, and I can’t handle that right now. So, not even Scott.”

The Sheriff sighed but nodded. He was a smart man; he knew when something was a lost cause.

“Okay, just, think about it.”

“Until I’m ready, Dad, can you,” she asked, waving her hand around as if that explained what she meant. She didn’t want to say it, and she wanted her dad to understand without her having to explain it.

“Keep them away until then?”

She nodded glumly.

He moved to kiss her on the temple.

“Your friends are werewolves, you realize. They’ll find a way into this house if they want to see you.”

“I’m aware, but I’m hoping they’ll respect my privacy not to go barging through my window like heathens.”

“It’ll be okay, Stiles.”

“I just want to be able to take a breath without realizing that the guy I spent so much time fighting for was never happy with me. You know?”

He nodded like he knew. Maybe he did.

“Do you want to make me something healthy for dinner and I won’t complain about it once? How does that sound?”

Stiles grinned.

“You’re the best, you know that? Father of the Year! Man of the World! Sheriff of the Universe!”

The Sheriff just laughed and shook his head, waving her on to make dinner. Her dad really was the best, she wasn’t exaggerating.


	4. Chapter 4

The last week of August, the Sheriff and Stiles packed up the Jeep with all of Stiles’ belongings and drove down to Berkeley. Stiles manned the map from the passenger seat while the Sheriff took directions, remembering the time they’d drove to see the Sheriff’s mother in Oregon and the Sheriff, tasked with the directions, had them driving 3 hours in the wrong direction. Grandma Stilinski had not been happy with the pair of them, but relieved when they finally showed up close to 8 hours late.

“Do you remember,” Stiles started to ask when red and blue lights flared up behind them. The Sheriff eased the Jeep onto the shoulder of the highway, Stiles’ stuff rattling in the back as they bumped along the rumble strip. The police cruiser whipped by followed by an ambulance and another cruiser.

“Something serious must be happening,” the Sheriff commented. “What were you saying?”

“Do you remember that road trip we took out to Iowa, when I was a kid?” she asked softly.

“Yeah, what about it?”

“I was just thinking about how angry Mom was that we’d gotten lost,” Stiles replied quietly. She didn’t like bringing up her mother if she couldn’t help it. It hurt them both too much, but she couldn’t stop herself from thinking about it. Plus it had been proven that Stiles had little to no self-control, and no filter. Nearly everything she thought, she said. It was a problem.

“Your mother was angry that I’d gotten us lost, actually. Well, gotten us lost _again_. She loved being lost,” the Sheriff replied with a small smile. “When you were a baby and you would scream and cry and the only thing to get you to sleep was a long car ride, she would put you in your car seat in the back of the Jeep and just drive, not caring where she was going. There were so many times she had to call me from a payphone at some roadside diner because she’d gotten herself lost again. But it made her happy, and it made you happy, so I just let it slide.”

Stiles smiled down at the map.

She knew how much her father loved her mother, and she knew that he would have done anything for her, but she never really heard just how wrapped around Claudia’s finger John was. John didn’t _talk_ about her mother often enough to really know.  

“How far away are we?” he asked.

“About an hour and a half, I think.”

The moment of sharing was done, and the Stilinskis settled back into their usual routine of ignoring their feelings.

-&-

Stiles’ dorm was in the Berkeley Towers, in tower A on the sixth floor, in the first suite, in the first room. She and the Sheriff hauled her boxes, bags, totes, and piles of crap into the elevator and rode it up to the sixth floor. She found her room in the short hallway, vacant of her roommate, with two door tags.

Her roommate’s read **_Jamien_**.

Stiles’ read her real name, **_Szczepan_**. Underneath her name, her RA had written **_WHAT?!_**

Stiles was used to this reaction, actually. Every time she had a new teacher, they’d reach Stilinski on the roll call, and just pause. They’d begin to mouth what they thought it would sound like and Stiles would just raise her hand, tell them to call her Stiles. She would have to do that for the rest of her life, probably. Szczepan was not exactly a desirable name, nor was it even feminine. She’d been named after her grandfather- which really, Mom? - and it was an unfortunate Polish name that she preferred not to think about.

The room was simple, two beds, two desks, and two wardrobes, and one microwave-fridge combination resting between the two halves. Stiles plunked her first load of belongings onto the bed nearest the door, her father following suit.

“Not bad, better than the dorms I had in college,” the Sheriff commented. “Two college boys crammed in a closet, with one window, that was quite a feat, let me tell you. It was the happiest day of my life when your mother and I got an apartment together.”

“I didn’t know you had an apartment in college,” Stiles replied, heading back towards the elevator, checking to make sure her key was in her pocket. “Why do you hide things from me? What kind of past do you keep locked away underneath that badge, Stilinski?”

“I’m not hiding anything, Stiles. You’re just never interested in hearing it.”

“I am plenty interested!”

He fixed her with a look as they waited for the elevator.

“Okay, so maybe I wander off a bit. That’s expected! I’ve been diagnosed for like, 10 years, Dad. You just gotta power through and tell me anyway.”

The Sheriff sighed just as the doors slid open, a girl with sandy blonde hair and three garbage bags full of clothes bustled out and straight into the Sheriff.

“Oh, I am _so_ sorry!” she yelped. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” the Sheriff soothed.

“Really, it is,” Stiles said with a smile. “Old man needs a bit of a shock now and then, to keep him on his toes. Come on, Daddy-O!”

“You can carry the rest of your stuff up on your own,” the Sheriff offered as the girl disappeared into Stiles’ suite and the pair stepped onto the waiting elevator.

“What? And miss some quality father-daughter bonding time?”

“We’ve had plenty of bonding time in the past couple of weeks, I’m sure I can manage.”

Stiles let out a mock cry, clutching the plaid shirt over her chest dramatically. They landed on the lobby floor, the Sheriff exited first. Stiles trailed after him, wailing quietly about how could be betray her in this way, his only daughter, his flesh and blood, his everything, his moon and sky.

“Are you sure you don’t want to switch your major to theatre or drama? You might be better suited,” the Sheriff said unfazed. Three months shy of 18 years with Stiles would do that to you, she supposed.

“I could always switch to criminology, and follow in your footsteps to become a cop in Beacon Hills, and then you would never get rid of me.”

The Sheriff hummed, leading her to where the Jeep was still parked. They prepared their next trip.

“I always thought you’d be a good cop,” the Sheriff conceded.

“Don’t ruin a good thing, Dad. We were bantering.”

“Is that what you call that?”

Stiles let out a snort, and pushed one of the heavier boxes into her dad’s grasp, and plopped a stuffed giraffe Scott had given her in middle school on top of it.

“You brought that with you?”

“It’s the first thing Scott ever bought me, like saved up his allowance and bought it all on his own for me. I thought I could use a bit of home.”

“Have you talked to him since, you know?”

“Since Derek turned into a raging dick-bag?”

“Language,” the Sheriff warned half-heartedly. The Stilinskis were decidedly less Derek-friendly these days. Curse words intended for Derek weren’t as frowned upon as others.

“The answer is no, by the way. I haven’t.”

“Alright,” the Sheriff said. It wouldn’t be the last time he brought it up, because the Stilinski brood did not know how to leave things be.

When they returned to Stiles’ dorm, her roommate had clearly been there, piles of things mounted on the bed opposite Stiles’, but her roommate was not in the room. They continued for two more trips, missing her roommate each time. Finally, worn out, sweaty, and task completed, the Stilinskis sank onto totes piled beside the door.

“I’m becoming a minimalist,” Stiles stated, looking at her things piled here and there in the tiny space. She moved to the windows after a minute and hoisted them up, letting some of the fresh air flow into the room. “Not a bad view.”

The Sheriff stood to join her and he nodded.

“Not at all.”

It overlooked campus; from six floors up, you could see from one end to the other. Stiles could make out miniature people passing from car to building, leisurely lounging in the grass of the quad, small clusters of freshman turning in circles in confusion. Stiles had her schedule, having driven down for orientation in July, and she searched for each building from her room.

“Do you want to grab something to eat, before I go?” the Sheriff asked.

“How are you getting back, anyway? If I have the Jeep?”

“I’m catching a bus back,” he said with a shrug.

“Why didn’t you just drive the truck up?”

“What? And miss some quality father-daughter bonding time?”

Stiles smiled.

“You’re getting a salad,” she said, swiping her keys from the desk and jamming her phone into her jeans pocket. “Because I know you’re not going to eat right while I’m gone. So you’re getting a salad.”

The Sheriff followed behind Stiles out of the dorm and into the elevator, shaking his head as they went. They found a small family diner down the street, and the Sheriff ordered a salad to appease Stiles, and she shared her curly fries with him. They talked about Stiles’ classes, and which deputy had irritated the Sheriff the most that week. The Sheriff paid for their meal and they drove back to campus.

“Can I give you a ride to the bus station?” she asked, parking in the student parking lot. She had to go get a parking permit from campus police before the end of the weekend, just another item on her long, ever-growing To Do list.

“It’s fine, I’m going to have dinner with one of my friend’s from the academy.”

“Ahhh, the ever-elusive academy buddies,” Stiles hummed.

“You know,” the Sheriff started, shifting in his seat to look at her. “Your mother would be really proud of you, Stiles. For everything.”

“Including the werewolves?”

“Including the werewolves. You do the right thing, the dangerous, reckless thing, but the right thing, and Claudia loved that about you, even when you were a kid. You stood up for Scott when you were terrified of Jackson, and you’ve done so much for someone so small. Your mother would’ve been proud to see the woman you’ve grown into.”

Stiles bit her lip and sniffled quietly.

“Okay, too many emotions. You need to go before you make me cry. I’ll be fine. I’ve been to campus, and I need to start acclimating myself to life without you. Now, shoo.”

“I love you, Stiles.”

“I love you too, Dad.”

-&-

Stiles rode the elevator back up to her floor alone, whistling as she swung her lanyard around in the empty space. When she arrived at her door, she found it open, her roommate inside.

“Hello?” Stiles called out. Her roommate had rearranged her side of the room slightly, moving the wardrobe and desk to act as a shield between her and Stiles. Stiles wanted to change her side, possibly, but that would have to wait until she had more energy and less aching limbs.

“Hi!”

The girl from earlier, who had nearly bowled over the Sheriff on her way out of the elevator, popped up from behind the desk with a smile.

“You must be the roommate,” she said. “I’m Jamien. I’m also very sorry about knocking your father over early. I need to look where I’m going.”

“It’s really okay, trust me. He didn’t get to be the Sheriff by being vulnerable to a bit of a shove now and then.”

Jamien grinned. She was pretty, with sand-colored straight hair and sparkling blue eyes on a slender face. She was thin, but short, Stiles easily towering over her. Stiles was used to that, though. She was tall for a girl, standing at 5 foot 10 inches, with long limbs she wasn’t quite sure what to do with. She was taller than Scott, but not as tall as Isaac, and she could use Lydia and Allison for arm rests.

Stiles moved to start sorting through her stuff when Jamien spoke up.

“I’m sorry, I’ve been trying to figure out how to pronounce your name since we got our housing assignments, and I even put it in a translator to figure it out, and I’ve got absolutely nothing. I have no idea what that is. Was there a typo somewhere down the line?”

“It’s not a typo, that’s my actual name. It’s pronounced Sch-eh-pan,” Stiles explained. She opened her mouth to just tell her to call her Stiles, but thought better. She wanted to be someone new here. She wanted to leave werewolves, and Beacon Hills, and her broken heart behind, and she didn’t really _want_ to be Stiles here. “But you can just call me Sarah.”

“Yeah, okay, Sarah. That’s a lot easier.”

Stiles smiled at her. She reached into one of her totes and found a permanent marker. She stepped up to the door and scribbled out **_Szczepan_** and replaced it with **_Sarah_**.


	5. Chapter 5

Jamien and Stiles settled into an easy friendship quickly. They attended their floor meeting together and laughed as the RA, Tyler attempted to say her name, buzzing like a bee for a few hilarious moments.

“Stilinski,” he eventually said, giving up entirely.

“You can just call me Sarah,” Stiles said, the name still sounding foreign in her mouth. She stumbled over the name every time she introduced herself, slowly training herself to respond to it, to not answer _Stiles_ every time. She had to remind herself that she wanted this, she wanted a new start.

Jamien gave her that new start. They traded stories about their high schools, their friends, and their family. They attended the events together, sitting side by side and whispering snarky comments about these stupid, mandatory events meant to integrate them into the community. They made fun of the stupid stunts they had to do at PlayFair, and sat next to each other at meals, braving the cafeteria during the most packed times.

“Dude,” she whispered, nudging Stiles with her elbow at their convocation. “Do you see that?”

She pointed towards the screen where the image of the president of the college was giving her speech. Stiles looked for a moment before she saw it. In the corner, a shadow from behind the screen showed two figures, one on their knees. Stiles giggled, turning to bury her head into Jamien’s shoulder.

“Oh my gosh!”

Stiles had won the roommate jackpot as far as Jamien went. Whenever one of them had tasks to complete around campus, the other went with them. Stiles had to pick up a parking pass from campus safety, and Jamien trailed along beside her. Jamien had a bone to pick with financial aid, and Stiles went along as encouragement. They waited for each other to get out of class before they went to get food from the caf.

Stiles also won the suitemate jackpot with all six other girls in her suite. In room A612, there was Erika and Makayla, sophomores who both enjoyed partying but only in numbers and only on the weekends, never on a school night. In room A613, there was Meaghan and Meredith, twin freshmen sisters who were pretty much the nicest girls you have ever met, even in the face of tormentors. And in room A614, there was Emily, a freshman and Crysta, a senior, both generally quiet girls who respectively had the best music and movie taste Stiles had ever seen. They all gathered in the lounge on Sundays to do homework, although that generally devolved into shouting about how much they hated their classes and making animal hissing noises at RA Tyler when he came to deal with some noise complaints.

School was working out quite well for Stiles as a whole. She dealt with all of the ice breaker classes, introducing herself as Sarah, and giving a few brief facts about herself.

“My name is Sarah. I’m a freshman, majoring in English Literature with a concentration in folklore. I am from Beacon Hills, California, and I used to play varsity lacrosse.”

What she didn't tell them in her icebreaker was that she usually went by Stiles, her ex-boyfriend was an emotionally constipated dick of a werewolf, she was only studying Folklore to become a better emissary when the time came, and her best friend (who she had ignored for the past three weeks leading up to leaving for school) was the Alpha of the resident werewolf pack. That all seemed a bit too heavy for first impressions.

The first couple of weeks were simple, easing their way into the material in some classes, hurtling headlong into it in others. She always had to work harder to focus than the rest of her classmates, but she could do it, and she was good at it.

So, school was good. She called her dad whenever she got a chance, which was every couple of days, and she tried to ignore the ache in her chest.

First, she thought it was from being so far from home, but being away from Beacon Hills was kind of a relief. There was a weight on her shoulders that had been lifted, and she could stand up straight. It wasn’t from being away.

She realized exactly what it was when she reached for her phone to call Scott about the ridiculously large guy in her Introduction to Mass Media course that reminded her of the twins’ Alpha morph form. She ached from being so far from _pack_. For a long time she wasn’t even sure she was part of the pack, always feeling inferior to everyone else, even the humans. Lydia was a banshee, and Allison was a huntress, and then Kira turned out to be a kitsune, and she never really felt good enough. But, things quieted down, and Scott was around to knock some sense into her. She and Scott had always been a pack since the day he was bitten, and just because she wasn’t supernatural like the rest of them didn’t mean she didn’t belong with them.

But she removed herself from the pack, stopped answering texts and calls and emails and Facebook messages and just shut them out because this was the safest for all of them.

This was her fault, of course.  

She bought a notebook and a new pen from the campus store, and she started to write. She’d always been good at writing, at spinning bullshit out of nothing because writing was just another form of lying, and she was _really_ good at lying. With the company she kept in Beacon Hills, you had to be good at lying. She wrote them letters, starting with Lydia, talking about the fashion she’d seen at Berkeley that reminded her of Lydia, wondering what kind of commentary she’d been making about them. She wrote to Isaac about this Berkeley scarf she saw and thought of him, and how she wanted to buy it for him, just because if he was going to wear those damn scarves, he was going to represent something decent. She wrote to Allison about the insane archery team that Berkeley had, how she could still best every single one of them with her eyes shut. She wrote to Scott about how she was getting her ass handed to her at the gym whenever Jamien and Emily dragged her out, and how she was so out of shape for having run for her life for three years. She even wrote to Kira, just to tell her that she had a Yukimura in her College Writing I class that was literally nothing like her, not that she expected them to be the same.

Mostly, though, she wrote to Derek.

She hated that whenever she opened that notebook, she automatically started to write to him. She told him about her professors, and her classes, and how Jamien was the female equivalent of Scott and that was the greatest thing in the world. She wrote him while sitting in class, and about how she and her suitemates were going to the mall that weekend to pick up some decorations for their suite. She wrote him about the dumb Latin class she was taking as a language requirement, and how she actually was kind of excited about it, and how Meredith and Meaghan both had taken years of Latin in high school and were prepared to be her tutors.

Writing wasn’t enough some days. Life on campus was fine, it was normal. But to Stiles, who had been fighting for her life since sophomore year, it was dull. It wasn’t even the kind of tranquil dull that she’d enjoyed over the summer, save that lone incident in the woods with the omega. This was the norm. It was always this dull. There were no competing werewolf packs in Berkeley, California, no hunters burning families to the ground, no geriatric hunters seeking revenge for the death of their daughters, no magic tree stump inflicting darkness around hearts and drawing every beasty into town, no kitsunes, no nogitsunes, nothing.

“What’s that?” Jamien asked, leaning over Stiles’ shoulder in the lounge as she read the latest article centered on a rash of unusual animal attacks.

“There’s been mountain lion attacks, apparently,” Stiles said with a snort.

“In Berkeley?”

“Yeah, strange, right? This is the third one in two weeks,” Stiles replied. “They’re going to bring in hunters soon, apparently, if they can’t catch the poor beast.”

“Have they left anyone dead?”

“No, not yet. Just in critical condition, but the doctors have high hopes they’ll all make a full recovery.”

“Well, you be careful walking back from class, okay? That’s a long way to walk after nine at night.”

“I’m not going to become lion chow, Jay, but thanks for your concern,” Stiles said.

“That’s my job, Sarah.”

Jamien swept into their room, leaving the door open as she cranked her study playlist. Stiles leaned in closer and looked at the images of the victims again, then checked her lunar cycle app on her phone. That wasn’t a mountain lion attack, she knew. She sighed.

 

-&-

 

There were two more attacks before the end of the week, and on the full moon, Stiles had had enough. She was not having rogue werewolves fucking with her college if she could help it. The full moon fell on a Thursday night, of course, also known as Thirsty Thursday, the night where stupid college kids regardless of age went out and got wasted around town. They were all just the perfect prey for hungry, dangerous werewolves on the most powerful night of the month.

Stiles pushed herself up out of her desk chair as soon as the first wolf howl rang through the air. She changed out of her soft, comfortable, warm pajamas and into a pair of nearly black jeans, a black tank top and a black hoodie.

“Where are you going?” Jamien asked as Stiles zipped up her boots overtop of her skinny jeans.

“Don’t worry about it, Jay,” Stiles replied, grabbing her car keys and can of wolfsbane pepper spray (her father’s idea, Lydia and Deaton’s design) out of the drawer of her desk.

“What are you doing, Sarah? It’s like 11 o’clock at night. Where are you going?”

“There’s just this party that I was headed to.”

“Sarah, you have a test in the morning, a major test, a really important, major test that you should not miss. You’ve been studying for the past three days. Don’t you think you should skip the party?”

“I know what I’m doing. Trust me, it’s fine. I’ll be back in time.”

“This just isn’t like you, are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry so much. I’m a big girl. I can handle a party. I’m just going to hang out for a bit, and I’ll be home before you know it.”

“I still don’t think this is a good idea,” Jamien grumbled, settling back into her mattress, textbook open as she studied before bed. Jamien was a little at a time studier, reading a little bit every day and keeping the material fresh in her mind, while Stiles tended to spend the day before her tests cramming, staying up late to get extra hours in.

“I’ll be back soon,” Stiles called out, jamming the wolfsbane into her pocket and her keys into another. “Don’t wait up.”

She slipped out the door, pulling it firmly shut behind her before hurrying towards the staircase. She tried not to rely heavily on the elevator, since she didn’t know when her life was going to be in danger again. It was bad enough that the trek from her dorm to her night class exhausted her, given that she used to be so in shape from running for her life and from lacrosse. She didn’t particularly enjoy climbing up and down six flights of steps every time she left her dorm room for places other than her lounge or bathroom, but she also didn’t particularly enjoy being outrun and killed by supernatural creatures of the night.

Students came and went at all hours, and the front desk never stopped anybody, but Stiles still slipped out the lobby maintenance exit at the foot of the stairs instead of risking being seen. She didn’t really know where to start, since she lacked supernatural senses to magically guide her towards rogue werewolf scents. She had a pretty good idea, though. All of the attacks had happened at night, on the edge of campus, surrounding the party houses. These werewolves were not dumb.

Drunken college kids were the easiest targets.

Stiles crawled into her Jeep and started it up, pulling out of the parking lot, heading across campus. It didn’t take long to get to the hub of the party houses, drunken students milling between parties, shouting at one another and waving around stereotypical red Solo cups. She parked outside one of the houses and walked towards it.

“What’s the occasion?” she asked the first intoxicated kid she came across.

“Life, baby!”

“Right,” she said with a shake of her head. College kids were dumb.

“And the full moon!” he continued, pointing with his cup up towards the sky.

“Yeah, that’s not the beginning of every bad supernatural movie in the world,” Stiles grumbled. College kids were _dumb_.

“Relax, Mama. Have yourself a drink! Enjoy the moonlight!” he slurred.

“If you ever call me Mama again, I am going to rip your liver out through your nose, and you will never be able to process alcohol again.”

He held up his hands in surrender as Stiles continued across the yard. There were so many possible victims; she couldn’t possibly stop this by herself.

Not for the first time, she wished she had her pack at her side. She wished Scott was there to form some sort of plan with, and Lydia to tell them how dumb their plan was, and Allison to bring weapons that would save their collective asses, and Isaac to make huffy little comments about how this was potentially suicidal, and Kira to kick ass with a sword. And Derek, she wanted Derek there to berate her for going after this rogue alone.

She knew that the wolf would most likely go after stragglers, students stumbling away from the group. The problem was that stragglers were everywhere, heading towards the center of town to get their drink on at a bar, or staggering back towards their dorms, or even in the direction they thought was another party but probably wasn’t.

Werewolves were, obviously, strongest at the full moon, so any attack that night might be fatal.

“Yo, Sarah!” a girl from her College Writing I class called from the steps of one of the townhouses on campus, swaying as she waved. Stiles felt like her name was Felicity, but it probably wasn’t. Pheobe, maybe. Definitely started with an _eff_ sound. “Want a drink?”

“No, thank you. I was looking for a friend. Kind of ugly, possibly no eyebrows, glowing eyes, more than likely foaming at the mouth?”

“Sounds a lot like my ex-boyfriend,” Possibly-Felicity snickered.

“You and me both,” Stiles muttered. “You seen anyone like that around? Might snarl at people? Seems a little feral?”

“No, why are you looking for them?”

“Just wanted to make sure they got home safely is all.”

“You’re a good person, Sarah. You go be a knight in shining armor for this hideous friend!” Felicity hiccupped.

“Stay inside, okay? Or at least, don’t go anywhere alone. Can you do that?” Stiles asked. “There’s been all of those attacks, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Felicity smiled drunkenly at Stiles.

“Thanks, Mama Bear. I won’t go anywhere.”

Stiles smiled back and headed on her way. She didn’t really have a plan. _Wing it_ , that was the whole plan. Not her most solid plan, ever, she had to admit, but it was infinitely more solid than most of the pack’s plans. Although, when the pack planned something, they had super strength and supernatural healing to back them up. All Stiles had on her was a can of pressurized wolfsbane and a set of keys.

“This was an awful idea,” Stiles said, rounding a corner between two of the townhouses and stepping into the dark. “Oh, this is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. If I die, my dad is going to kill me.”

Something rattled, a metal on metal rattle, near her. She froze and reached for her pocket, tugging at the top of the wolfsbane spray container. Stiles’ main reactions to scary things is to sass them until help comes, but here help wasn’t going to come, which was almost her fault entirely. Here, she had to save herself.

“Okay, no more damsel in distress. Save the day, Stiles,” she said, pulling the spray free and holding it out in front of her, brandishing it like a weapon. “Come on out!”

A cat, mangy and old, streaked by her, brushing against her legs.

“Holy shit,” she sighed, letting out a breath she, like the cliché she was, didn’t know she had been holding. “Okay, shit. Compose yourself, Stilinski. You’re a werewolf hunter right now, hunt the werewolves, not the tom cats.”

She hurried down the alley, one hand held out with her spray, the other skirting against the brick wall to keep her steady. She repeated the facts she knew about werewolves in her head to keep her heartbeat even. When she stepped out onto the pathway on the other side of the townhouses, she paused for a moment, looking both ways.

“Little lost, are we?” someone asked from behind her. She turned to find a student sitting on the steps to one of the houses, taking slow drags from a cigarette.

“No, I’m just looking for a friend. I could’ve sworn he came down this way.”

“He didn’t,” he said, intentionally blowing smoke her way. She shifted the can of wolfsbane in her hand. Lydia had had it tested on one of the wolves, and on a human, and it did more damage to a werewolf, obviously, but it still stung like hell to a human. Best of both worlds, Lydia had said with a grin.

“Well, I better go then,” Stiles said, hooking her thumb over her shoulder. He stood and flicked his cigarette away, descending the stairs. Stiles stumbled backwards with every step he took.

“Who said you had to go?” he asked, flashing his eyes a bright, supernatural blue.

“I did,” Stiles said, raising her hand and pressing the trigger on the can down. He let out a howl as the wolfsbane connected with his face, his hand flying up to protect his eyes, claws scraping at his cheeks. Stiles watched in awe of what Lydia and Deaton could create together for a moment before a small voice inside her head screamed at her to run while he was preoccupied. She turned and sprinted away, glad that Jamien had dragged her to the gym occasionally. She didn’t stop, didn’t look back until she’d reached her Jeep. She locked herself inside and sat for a moment, gripping the steering wheel until her hands had stopped shaking from fear or adrenaline or a mix of the two.

“Note to self, do not go looking for trouble without supernatural bodyguards,” Stiles said to her windshield before starting up the Jeep and driving slowly back to her dorm to turn in for the night.


	6. Chapter 6

_Lydia,_

_I used your pepper spray last night. Works like a charm. I was dumb enough to go looking for trouble, and dumb enough to not have an exit plan other than that pepper spray. That pepper spray saved my life._

_I want to send you a detailed report almost on the exact cause and effect of last night, but I won’t. I’ll continue to pretend that I was not one small can of wolfsbane pepper spray away from death or assault._

_You’re a godsend, Lydia Martin._

_Never change._

_-Stiles Stilinski_

Stiles turned the page in her notebook, flipping it over in her lap, poised the pen and began again.

_Isaac,_

_We were never friends, not really. Acquaintances. Pack members. People who happen to share a love for Scott McCall. People in close proximity. But never friends. We don’t share memories of our mothers, fading fast with every day that has passed since their deaths. We don’t talk about what we want to do with our lives. We don’t giggle conspiratorially as we hide Scott’s keys and watch as he tries to sniff out hunks of metal hidden somewhere in his house so that he’ll make it to work on time today. We don’t act like friends, because we aren’t. I don’t know what your favorite color is. I don’t know what makes you laugh, whether your humor is more based on puns or on dirty jokes or on watching boys do dumb stunts in videos on the Internet. I don’t know these things about you, and you don’t know these things about me._

_And I_

“What are you writing?” Erika asked, sinking into a seat across from Stiles in the lounge one night. “You always have that notebook with you, and you’re always scribbling. Jamien told me not to mention it, but I’m too curious.”

“It’s fine. Jamien handles me with kid gloves sometimes.”

“So, what are you writing?” Erika prompted.

“I left home on pretty bad terms with my friends,” Stiles said softly, looking out the window as she tried to explain it sufficiently. “I had a falling out with my boyfriend, and he got my friends in the split, I guess. And I find myself reaching out to grab their attention, or going to shoot them a text, and I remember that I can’t, so I write them letters that I have no intentions on sending.”

“They would probably like to hear from you,” she said with a gentle smile.

“You’re not wrong.”

“I don’t get it, then.”

“I don’t, either.”

 

_And I hate that. You are my best friend’s best friend. You are a permanent member in the McCall pack. You and I are not so different, even though we would both hiss and spit at the implication._

_I don’t know what to say, really, which comes to a surprise to us both. It’s half my fault that I never found out more about you, because I was jealous that I had to share my best friend with someone else. That’s half the reason I don’t know Allison as well as Scott hoped I would. I don’t want to share him, because I have never had to before. It was always Scott and I against the world, you know? ScottandStiles, StilesandScott, never ScottandStiles plus someone else. I’m sorry I was always such a dick to you. I shouldn’t have been. Scott liked you. Scott trusted you. I hated your scarves, but that didn’t mean I had to hate you too._

“Stiles,” Erika muttered, nudging Stiles in the side gently. She looked up and at Erika. She was a sweet girl, with long hair the color of copper and big blue eyes sparkling. “You shouldn’t let a dumb boy stand between you and your friends. Bros before hoes, you know. Chicks before dicks. Sisters before misters.”

Stiles smiled at Erika and closed the notebook.

“You want to walk into town with me? I kind of want a decent iced chai latte,” Stiles said, pausing a moment before adding, “That isn’t from the café in the dining hall.”

“You’re paying, though,” Erika said with a mischievous grin. Stiles laughed and shook her head before she took her notebook and pen back into her room to stash it underneath her collection of movies in the bottom drawer of her desk. She slipped into a pair of flip flops, stuffed her keys into her jeans pocket, and shrugged a plaid button up on over her thin, white tank top. She wriggled her phone into her jeans as well, cursing small pockets and tight jeans, before double checking she had her keys.

“Ready?” Stiles asked, pulling her door shut and wiggling the door handle to make sure it was locked. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust her suitemates, she did, and it wasn’t that she didn’t trust the people on her floor. It was just that she grew up as the Sheriff’s daughter, and their door was always locked, and if Stiles was home alone, the alarm system was activated. She knew what was out there, both human and otherwise. Besides, it wasn’t just her stuff in that room, anyway; it was Jamien’s as well.

“Yeah, don’t you need your wallet?”

“Nah, we are going to the Eye Opener, and I am gonna use what’s left of my Berkeley Bucks,” Stiles replied, leading them out to the elevator lounge area. “Stairs or elevator?”

“We’re walking downtown, we can take the elevator,” Erika answered, pressing the down arrow for the lift.

“Good thinking, you’re a smart one. I’ll keep you around.”

“I’d like to see you get rid of me, honestly.”

“Is that a challenge?” Stiles joked as the doors slid open. Nathan, a boy from Suite 2, stepped out, bumping into Stiles on his way off.

“Oh, sorry. Didn’t see you there, Sarah,” Nathan said with what Stiles was sure was supposed to be a flirtatious smile. He wasn’t unattractive or anything, and he didn’t have a repulsive personality, but Stiles was just so over being attracted to people. It never worked out in her favor.

Then again, she’d been attracted to Lydia Martin, Beacon Hills’ resident personification of perfect, and Derek Hale, Beacon Hills’ resident personification of man pain and guilt.

“That’s quite alright, I’m used to people not noticing my presence,” Stiles said with a shrug.

“Really?” he asked.

“Nope,” she said, slipping into the elevator after Erika and pressed the lobby floor button. “See you later, Nathan.”

The doors slid shut and the elevator started to rattle down the shaft.

“So,” Erika started.

“Don’t.”

“I didn’t-”

“You were going to, so just don’t. I don’t need to know that Nathan was flirting with me and I should give him a chance because the last time I gave a guy a chance, he split my heart in half. So, nope. Nope. I don’t want to hear it.”

“Okay, fair enough. That boy must’ve done a real number on you, Sarah,” Erika said as they reached the bottom level of the tower, the doors sliding open again for them.

Stiles hummed in agreement, leading down the hallway to the main lobby and down the stairs to the doors without answering.

“Oh!” Erika said, skipping to Stiles’ side. “So, get this. Bran called me last night and asked me to block this really annoying bitch from high school on Facebook, right?”

“Okay.”

“Apparently they fucked around back then, and now she’s starting up drama, like she’s saying he’s really bad in bed and no one should come within 10 feet of his dick, all this shit.”

“Bran is your brother, right?”

“Yeah,” Erika replied, looking both ways before they crossed the street and turned right, heading towards town. “And this is the bitch that made my life hell in high school, and my brother, my own twin brother, fucked around with her!”

“Ouch,” Stiles said. She didn’t have a brother, other than Scott, and he would never do something like that. Of course, that would involve sleeping with Jackson, and no matter how many times she went along with jokes about Scott and Isaac, there was really no way that Scott was gay.

“I blocked her, because I’m a good sister, but not before I sent him quite a few angry messages about this. Sophie Bartle, of all people!”

“I’m sorry, Erika.”

“Meh,” she muttered as they passed Stiles’ Freshmen Seminar professor. Stiles politely said hello with a sweet smile before ducking her head. “But like, I went to a big high school, Sarah. My high school made Beacon Hills look like an ant farm.”

“Is that an expression?”

She ignored that and continued, “There were so many girls to choose from to screw around with and he picked _Sophie Bartle_! I am so angry at him. He knows what that bitch did, and he still fucked her.”

“Erika, how long ago was this?”

“Like, junior year, I guess.”

“So, three years?”

“Well, it’s not like I’ve known about it for three years.”

“Erika.”

“Don’t give me that voice, Sarah Stilinski.”

“I’m just saying, it’s been three years since he’s had anything to do with her. Maybe you should let it slide? I mean, you can’t know if the last words you’ll say to someone are out of anger until it’s too late, you know?”

Erika stopped walking and stared after Stiles until she stopped as well.

“Oh, baby, who hurt you?” Erika cooed, stepping up and wrapping Stiles in an unexpected hug. Stiles let out a startled squeak before hugging her back for a moment.

“Is that going to happen every time I try to give you guys advice?” Stiles asked, breaking away and ushering Erika on. “Because if it is, I’m just going to leave you guys to flounder through life on your own, without my perfectly researched expertise.”

Erika laughed.

“I’ll keep the hugging to a minimum, I promise.”

“It’s not even the hugging. It’s just the sudden need to comfort me. You guys all do it, you, Meaghan, Meredith, Jamien. You see the slightest upset and you swarm like I’m about to burst apart. Do I really seem like I’m moments from a breakdown?”

“No, but you’re a long way from home, and the only person from home you talk to is your father, and we just want you to know that we’re your friends.”

“I know that you’re my friends,” Stiles replied.

“And we want you to know that we’ve got your back. Jamien, most of all, but we’re all here for you. So, when you’re ready, we want to help you find a boy, or girl, you like, and if they hurt you, we will tear them apart one limb at a time,” she said in a bright, cheery voice. That was Erika for you, actually. She was protective, almost to a fault, and loyal, and she would in fact rip you apart for harming someone she cared about, and she would do it with a smile.

“I’m glad I got you guys,” Stiles replied.

“And we’re glad we got you, Sarah,” Erika cooed, pressing a sloppy kiss into Stiles’ cheek. “Now, come along, coffee!”

Erika skipped slightly ahead, singing various Disney songs while Stiles recorded her and sent the videos to her suitemates. Finally, almost half an hour later, they reached the epicenter of Berkeley and headed straight for Eye Opener, one of Stiles’ favorite off-campus hangouts. They accepted Berkeley Bucks, and they had air conditioning, and often if Stiles smiled enough, the owner would let her sample a donut.

Erika and Stiles split a coffee cake muffin and each got an iced latte, Stiles’ a chai and Erika’s a mocha.

“Shall we stroll?” Erika asked, gesturing towards the door.

“We shall.”

They chatted aimlessly, Stiles telling Erika about this monster of a guy that tried to bowl her over in the dining hall the other day, and Erika in turn telling her about how she was trying to peel her orange and she sprayed half the table with orange juice. Erika stopped to snap a photo of the two of them for Facebook, and then another on Snapchat, and they surpentined their ways through the maze of Berkeley streets.

“We should head ba-” Stiles started to say when her gaze found a familiar head of blonde curls lounged outside a café just down the street from them. He was wearing sunglasses and one of his ridiculous scarves, but she knew Isaac Lahey when she saw him, and she was going to kill him.

“Sarah?”

Erika brought her back with a tug on her arm. Stiles let herself be tugged across the street, heading back towards campus, sparing one last glance at Isaac before deciding to forget about it momentarily.

“We should head back, I still have a fuckload of homework to do before class tonight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I know nothing about Berkeley University or Berkeley, California.  
> All information is made up and based off of my own college experiences at MCLA in North Adams, Massachusetts. :)
> 
> Thank you for your cooperation.


	7. Chapter 7

Stiles went about the next week like she normally would. She went to class, and she did her homework in the lounge with her suitemates, and she walked to dinner with whoever was available. She showered almost regularly, almost missed her early morning classes, and she watched too much Netflix while Jamien complained about her watching too much Netflix instead of studying. Life went on normally for a week like that, except that she kept seeing the pack everywhere.

Not delusions, either.

They could’ve been, but other people saw them too, so they weren’t just hallucinations. They were on campus, walking amongst the students, pretending they were supposed to be there when they obviously were not supposed to be there.

After her glimpse of Isaac in the center of town, she noticed Scott first. He was ducked behind a group of frat boys coming out of the gym while she headed for the library. She pretended not to see him, even though she ached to run to him and hug the crap out of her best friend and demand he update her on everything she missed in Beacon Hills. She saw Lydia next while she was in group discussion during her Literature of American Cultures. She passed by the open doorway a grand total of eight times in the hour and a half she sat in class. She wanted to leave her group to flounder through the material assigned to them and rush to the banshee, hug the daylights out of her, and demand she update her on relevant things that she missed in Beacon Hills. She stayed seated for the entire class. A few days later, Allison was reading casually on a bench in the quad, her long legs stretched out in front of her, ignoring all of the passing leers of horny college boys and girls alike. Stiles was late for class already so she put her head down and hurried on, squelching the desire to slide into the empty space beside Allison Argent and not feel so alone for just a few minutes.

At the end of the week, she spies Isaac in the quad as she walks aimlessly with Erika and Meaghan. They just wanted to get out of the dorm and move around, enjoy the south California weather while they waited for the rest of the suite to get done with classes and study groups. Erika was from the north, like Stiles, and Meaghan was from Montana. Warmth in October was amazing, especially for the twins.

Isaac was trying to act normally, a scarf swept around his neck despite the heat like the tool he was, passing from the library steps towards the bench nearby like he belonged on campus. Stiles gritted her teeth, stopping and glaring at him.

“Excuse me, I have an irritant to deal with,” she grumbled at Erika and Meaghan. She stalked towards Isaac, who looked up as she neared, frozen like a deer caught in the headlights.

“Isaac Jonathan Lahey, _what_ are you doing here?”

“How did you even find out my middle name?”

“That is not the point! What are you doing here?”

“Stiles, you don’t understand.”

“Did Derek send you?”

“Stiles.”

“No, Isaac. Do not _Stiles_ me. Did. Derek. Send. You?”

“I-”

“And don’t you dare lie to me! I don’t have super wolfy hearing but I know when you lie. You have a tell.”

“I have a tell?”

“Isaac, answer the question.”

“Yes, okay, is that what you wanted to hear? He sent us. There are some wolves hanging around Berkeley, and he wants, _we_ all want you to be safe.”

“I don’t want, or need your protection, okay? I am a big girl and I can take care of myself. Tell Derek that. I don’t need your protection, and I don’t need his pity. Tell him to shove his protection up his ass for all I care, just stop hanging around campus.”

Isaac gave her a sad look.

“I just want you to be safe, that’s why I agreed to this. I’m not spying on you. I’m not reporting what you’re up to back to Derek. I’m just here to make sure no one tries anything. Can’t I do that?”

“No. Isaac, I love you. I do. You’re pack. You’re a great guy, but I am surrounded by peers here, friends that won’t let me get hurt, where most of the population is human. Go back to Beacon Hills, tell Derek what I said, and warn him that if I catch any of you around here, I will have to start carrying around wolfsbane pepper spray again.”

“Okay.”

He started to walk away when she called out, “And Isaac? It was good seeing you. I missed you guys.”

“It was good seeing you too, Stiles.”

She watched him going, smiling to herself. She returned to Erika and Meaghan, Meredith and Makayla having joined them on the sidewalk.

“Who was that?” Meaghan asked, gesturing towards Isaac’s receding figure.

“Old friend, barging into my life, like I asked him not to. Lahey is less than, how do I put this delicately, obedient.”

“He was cute,” Meredith stated.

“I’ll let his secret boyfriend know you think so.”

“Secret boyfriend?” a few of the girls echoed.

“Note the scarf,” Stiles said with a shrug. They didn’t bother to ask.

“So, what was that he called you? Stiles?” Erika asked.

“Old nickname, short for Stilinski.”

“I like it, it’s kind of spunky.”

“Yeah, I used to be spunky,” Stiles said with a shrug. She fixed her suitemates with a look daring them to say anything. “I’m just Sarah now.”

 

 -&-

 

It didn’t take long for the word to get back to Derek that Stiles was being an uncooperative little shit. Stiles was stretched out in one of the lounge chairs, legs thrown over the table where she was supposed to be doing a paper. She wasn’t even properly dressed, wearing a pair of the shortest sleep shorts and an off-the-shoulder crop top the showed off more skin than covered it. Nathan came out of the elevator lounge, backpack still on his shoulders from his night class.

“There is a visitor for you hanging around the front door; do you want him to come in?” Nathan asked, sinking into the seat beside her. He shrugged off his bag and set it near him, raising a hand to scrub through dirty blonde hair. Stiles liked Nathan for a variety of reasons, but the number one thing she liked about him was his complete lack of similarity to anyone in Beacon Hills.

“Visitor? For lil’ ol’ me? Looks like my dowry will not be wasted,” Stiles cooed, setting her laptop on the side table. “What’s this visitor look like?”

“Does that matter?”

“Kind of. If he looks like a Mexican puppy dog with a crooked jaw, then absolutely. If he looks like a tall, dark serial killer with the most gorgeous green eyes, then absolutely not.”

Nathan snickered.

“It’s the latter.”

“Yeah, no, I absolutely do not want him on any circumstance anywhere inside this residence hall,” Stiles replied. “How’d you find out he was for me?”

“I don’t know, it was so weird. He just kind of grabbed my arm and demanded I let him in so he can talk to you.”

Stiles couldn’t help but roll her eyes. Classic Derek Hale moves. She leaned towards the window and tried to spy Derek from 6 floors up. There was a dark shadowy figure close to the building that she was sure was Derek but couldn’t be sure without getting closer.

“Sounds like him, then.”

“Who is he?”

“Doesn’t matter. Do you mind doing me a favor, though? It would be a big help if you would, and I would totally owe you!”

“Depends. It’s not like, beating that guy up, though, right? Because that guy is jacked, and I am not.”

“No, it’s not beating him up. It’s just sending a message.”

“Is this message going to get me shot?”

“Maybe gnawed on a little, but what he has isn’t contagious.”

“What?”

“Doesn’t matter, you willing?”

“Yeah, I guess. You owe me big time for this, though, Sarah.”

“Excellent.”

She tore out a piece of paper from her notebook and scribbled quickly across it, barely making her note legible.

 _You got Beacon Hills and the pack in our divorce.  
_ _This is my territory. Fuck off before I surround the building in mountain ash._  
-S

“What you’re going to do is go down to him, give him this, and tell him to fuck off. Then get inside. That’s all. That’s all I need you to do,” Stiles asked, folded up the piece of paper and held it out for Nathan. He eyed it warily like it might explode if he were to touch it. Stiles shook it a little bit before he reached out and took it from her.

“Okay, I’ll be right back. Hopefully.”

“I’d try and reassure that his bark is worse than his bite but I’ve met several people who have encountered his bite, and well,” she said with a shrug. “Their lives are not exactly peachy keen anymore.”

“Never be a life coach, Sarah.”

“Noted,” she said. He headed towards the stairwell and Stiles waited for the door to bang shut before she leaned towards the window. She found the possibly-Derek shadow on the ground, watched him pace across the pavement. Another figure, Nathan, appeared at the edge of her vision and she watched them meet in the middle. Nathan handed over the note, and Derek opened it. She couldn’t make out what exactly was happening but Nathan was lingering. Derek handed something back to Nathan after a second, glanced up towards the Tower like he knew exactly where she was, and then started to walk away. She watched him go with an irritating ache in her chest.

 She stayed there, watching Derek’s figure head away until she couldn’t see him anymore, and then Nathan stepped into the lounge.

“That guy, that guy is intense.”

“What’d he give you?”

“How do you-”

“I was watching. What’d he give you?”

“You should let your serial killer know that I am not an owl, and refuse to be treated as such,” Nathan said, handing over a folded up piece of paper. She unfolded it and found her own note staring back at her. She looked up at Nathan, confused.

“What is this?”

“Flip it over, dum-dum.”

She turned it over.

_**Watch your back, Stiles. There’s an unfriendly pack hanging around, and they’re looking to tear apart anyone in connection with us.** _   
_**I’ll tell everyone to go home, just be careful.** _   
_**I still care about you.** _   
_**–D** _


	8. Chapter 8

Stiles hoisted her backpack onto her shoulders and called a goodbye to her classmates and professor as they headed towards the parking lot near the classroom hall. There were a grand total of five students in her night class on Intro to Mass Media, none of which were freshmen like her, and all of which were commuters with spouses and jobs and lives. She had to walk all the way across campus to get back to her dorm, since her classroom hall was at the farthest edge on one side and her residence hall on the other farthest edge. Her night class couldn’t be at the closest classroom hall, of course. It had to be at the furthermost point on campus, even past the campus safety office, and it had to let out at 9:30, because her life was one giant plot to kill her.

There were two paths back to the Towers, one took a long route around three of the dorm halls, and the other was a tunnel that went underneath them and opened up on the other side of the quad. Stiles courted danger and took the tunnel, which was creepy during the day and downright terrifying at night since the burned out bulbs hadn’t been changed in two weeks. She’d been taking this route back since the first week of classes, cutting through the tunnel every Tuesday night with her keys gripped in her hands and her backpack weighed heavy with books. She was prepared for a fight the first couple of weeks, but well into the semester, even with a threat of possible werewolf attacks looming over her, she had eased up on precautions.

Which, in hindsight, was an awful idea, of course.

She stepped into the dark tunnel, whistling off-key to herself, thinking about the pint of Ben & Jerry’s she has waiting for her in the mini-fridge’s freezer. She heard a growl from in front of her, a feral, bone-chilling sound that echoed down the length of the chilly stone corridor. She glanced around, blind. It was too dark to see, and too long of a tunnel to be lit up by streetlamps near the entrances.

“Please, don’t kill me,” she said to the darkness, as if praying to some god. She didn’t believe in god, but she also didn’t not believe either. She just knew that the universe was designed to make her life as terrifying and anxiety-ridden as possible.

The only answer she got in return was another echoing snarl, this time from behind her.

Stiles had spent enough time with Scott and the rest of the pack to know her odds of survival against werewolves, and any other supernatural beastie.

Slim to none, actually.

Stiles might actually die tonight and the last thing she said to her dad was that he was a cheater. The last thing she said to her best friend was, god, she can’t even remember what the last thing she talked to Scott was about.

She was an awful person.

Another growl, deeper and closer, came, and Stiles stumbled towards the edge of the tunnel. She hoped that maybe if she slunk down small enough, the rabid, terrifying death monsters might pass her like in all of the movies she’d watched as a kid.

She heard the pounding of feet hitting the pavement, more pairs than she could make out, almost deafening as they bounced around her.

She was scared.

Her wolfsbane was in her room, and her keys were buried somewhere in her backpack, and she was scared. She might actually die because she didn’t listen to Derek. She really should’ve listened to Derek.

A handful of claws grabbed her by her arm and pulled her away from the wall, setting her in the middle of the tunnel. She could hear the heavy panting of excited wolves all around her, the rustling as they shifted from foot to foot, waiting for a signal from their leader to tear her apart. Stiles hoped it would never come.

Suddenly, they all just attacked, shoving her, swiping her with their claws, spinning her around and laughing like they enjoyed watching her try and right herself. One used her backpack to send her into the wall, bashing her head against it and dizzying herself. Another kicked the back of her knee and sent her sprawling out against the dirty stone. 

“Hold her,” a deep, lisping voice barked, and if Stiles wasn’t absolutely terrified, she would’ve made a smart ass remark about that. Claws dug into her skin on her arms as several, probably very large, werewolves lifted her onto her feet and held her in place.

“Send your Alpha a message for me, won’t you?” the same deep voice growled into her ear, his breath hot on her neck and not in a sexy way. She struggled against the vice grips on her arms, only succeeding in digging their claws in deeper into her sin. “Shouldn’t have sent away your guard dogs.”

“You did not just make a dog joke about your own kind,” she scoffed as he lifted up the bottom of her shirt. She tried to move away, but the hands held her firm.

“Those mutts on Hale territory are hardly my kind, now shut up.”

She closed her eyes and held her breath, as if that would stop what was about to happen from happening. His breath ghosted across her bare stomach and settled on her hip. She couldn’t keep her hips from rocking away, drawing back in fear. There was no warning, no witty comment, no time to prepare herself. One second, he was breathing heavily on her skin, and the next, his fangs sank deep into it. She screamed, bucking away from him instinctually.

As quickly as they had showed up, they were gone, letting her collapse to the cement with nothing to break her fall.

She whimpered, pressing her hand to her side in attempt to slow the bleeding. She had to get out of the tunnel, and she had to get to someone who knew werewolves.

Dizzy, she picked herself up off the ground and stumbled the rest of the way to end of the tunnel. There wasn’t anyone out and about, luckily, and the parking lot for the Towers’ residents was closer than the Towers themselves. She fell gratefully against the side of the Jeep, groaning as she shrugged off her bag and let it _thump_ to the ground. Stiles hissed as she knelt down and tugged the zipper open. She rifled around slowly through until her hand hit the metal of her keys. She dragged the keys out from under her massive Mass Media textbook and sighed, leaning back to take a breath, working through the pain in her side. It was radiating out, affecting everything. Her leg hurt and her chest hurt, her arms definitely hurt, and her head hurt. She just wanted to lay down, but she had to get to someone.

Preferably a someone with green eyes, and expressive eyebrows, and was experienced with werewolf bites.

But anyone would do.

She lugged her bag into the Jeep with her, panting heavily. She was so tired. Blood loss was draining. She knew that you could lose about 2 liters of blood before you were in mortal danger, and thankfully the wound on her side, while deep, hadn’t nicked any major arteries. She wouldn’t die, unless the bite didn’t take. In which case, she did not want to be in Berkeley spewing black goo from every orifice she had.

She did not want to die like Paige, but dying in Derek’s arms would be preferable to dying on the side of the road. Stiles shakily turned the keys in the ignition and listened with relief as the Jeep growled and groaned to life. She pat the old girl’s dash and pulled out of her parking spot. She kept the speed even as she made her way to the highway and as soon as she reached the open road, she pressed her foot desperately on the gas in attempt to get home as fast as she could.

Berkeley was 3 hours away from Beacon Hills, but Stiles crossed into Beacon County just over two hours after she got out of Berkeley, an all-time best. Half of her wanted to turn towards home and spend possibly her last couple hours with her father, but she didn’t want him to have to watch her die like he had her mother. The rest of her wanted to see Derek one last time, even if it was to die with him at her side.

She pulled up to the loft and groaned, the ache in her side turning to a burning fire. She gasped, throwing the Jeep into park. She fumbled for her phone in her pants pocket and dialed Derek’s number, ignoring the 11 missed calls from Jamien and the 32 text messages from Jamien plus the rest of the suite.

“Stiles?” he answered almost immediately.

“D’rek,” she whined.

“Stiles, where are you? Are you okay?”

“I’m downstairs, in the parking lot,” she said, trying to ignore the smell of her own blood and the feeling of fire in her veins. She felt lightheaded, like she would during a panic attack. “I need you.”

“I’ll be right down,” he said and the dial tone echoed from the other end.

She clicked out a quick text message to Jamien.

**Am fine, freaked out, went home. Be home tomorrow.**

She tossed her phone away and pushed the door open, stumbling weakly towards the front door of Derek’s building. The door flung open and he emerged, looking just as perfect as he always had. He must’ve been working out before she called, since he was wearing just a pair of basketball shorts and a damp tank top sticking to his skin. He caught her as she pitched forward into his arms, legs giving out finally. “Stiles, what happened? You’re bleeding all over.”

“I got attacked,” Stiles answered. “I shouldn’t be here but I didn’t know where else to go, and I know I should have listened to you when you said that someone was hanging around, but I didn’t, and they fucking jumped me on my way back from my night class, and one of them bit me, and I don’t know if it was the Alpha or what but I don’t want to be a werewolf, Derek. And I know you can’t do anything if I was bitten but I needed someone and I couldn’t go anywhere else.”

“Okay, come on, let’s get you laying down,” he said softly, lifting her into a bridal carry. She buried her head into his shoulder and whimpered. He shushed her gently, circling his fingers on the skin he could while still carrying her. “I’ve got you, baby.”

“Mmm, am I dying?”

“You’re not going to die. You drove three hours here, and your body hasn’t started to reject the bite yet. That’s a good sign.”

“Two.”

“What?”

“It was two hours. I sped. My dad would be furious.”

“It’s okay, he’ll forgive you.”

“Do you forgive me, too?”

“Why do I need to forgive you?”

“For whatever made you break up with me,” she slurred, hating herself as soon as the words came out of her mouth. She didn’t have super control over her mouth on a good day but blood loss made her self-control take a nose dive. If she had more strength, she might have already wrapped her legs around Derek’s waist and had him against the wall.

“It wasn’t anything you did, Stiles.”

“Are you sure? Because you weren’t happy.”

“Stiles, I have to set you down.”

“No,” she whined and clung tighter to him. “Why?”

“I have to open the door.”

“Leave it. Phase through it.”

He set her down, leaning her heavily on himself with one hand resting against the small of her back. She clung to him, fists bunching the material of his tank top to keep herself from drifting away. She pressed her forehead against his sternum and breathed in slowly.

“Hold on,” he muttered, shifting and pulling the sliding door open to the loft easily. He lifted her back up in the bridal carry and walked into the loft, laying her down on his bed. She curled onto her uninjured side, letting Derek peel the shirt away from her wound. She hissed uselessly while he reassured her quietly, petting the skin of her stomach gently. “This is deep, Stiles.”

“Am I going to die?”

“No, I don’t think so. I’m going to call Melissa.”

“Melissa? McCall? Scott’s mom?”

“That’s the same one.”

“Why?”

“Because you have a wound, Stiles, and we can’t just take you to a hospital with claw marks in your arms and a bite in your side. There is no way to explain that to a physician that doesn’t know about us. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, you’re smart.”

“Thanks.”

He left her side for a moment, and she closed her eyes, breathing slowly, trying to memorize the smell of Derek’s sheets.

“Stiles!” a voice barked, a hand shaking her shoulder roughly. She opened her eyes and the shaking stopped.

“Wot,” she murmured.

“You have to stay awake, just until Melissa gets here, okay?”

“But sleep creates blood, and I’ve lost blood, so sleep is the next logical step,” Stiles yawned. Derek had a first aid kit in his hands, Stiles noticed. “Have you ever used one of those before?”

He shook his head.

“We used to have one in the house before, y’know, because we had humans in the pack as well as wolves. But I was always too young, and the humans tended to help the humans with first aid.”

“It’s easy,” she said. “There should be some antiseptic wipes in there, clean the cuts out with that. Put on the antibiotic ointment, then cover it with the bandages. You can do it.”

He followed her instructions, rifling through the white box until he found each item. He set to work on her bite first, cleaning it out with one hand and holding her hand with the other. She liked this version of him, soft and gentle Derek who held your hand and comforted you through pain. This version didn’t come out to play too often, stuck behind a cold exterior put up to protect himself from anymore damage.

“Are you okay?” he asked as he pressed the bandage to her side. She nodded.

“When did you get to be so perfect?”

“What?”

“You’re holding my hand and being so gentle, and your eyebrows aren’t judging me at all. You look almost,” she trailed off. She had been wrong the last time she’d assumed he was happy.

“Almost?” Derek asked quietly, using his free hand to brush hair out of her face. She needed a haircut desperately, the ends of her hair frayed and split.

“Almost _happy_.”

“I like,” he started and shook his head.

“You like?”

“It doesn’t matter. Melissa’s here.”

He pressed a kiss into her temple and got up to let her in.

“Momma!” Stiles called as Melissa stepped into the loft.

“Stiles,” she sighed and hurried to the bedside. She knelt down and threaded a hand through Stiles’ hair. “What did you do up at school?”

“Strangely, not my fault,” Stiles coughed.

“Okay, well, let’s just see what you have gotten into yourself into,” she said, peeling the corner of the bandage up and poking gently. “You definitely got bit.”

“I deduced that for myself when they held me in place and one of them tore open my side with their teeth.”

“Oh, sweetie. You are going to be okay. It looks like Derek cleaned it out pretty well, and it didn’t hit anything major. It’s not deep enough to cause any damage, but you are going to have a nasty scar once this heals.”

“Unless you turn in the morning,” Derek mentioned. “Then you won’t have a scar at- Not helpful,” he trailed off at a look from Melissa. He shrugged as she turned back to Stiles.

“Any other cuts or?”

“Her arms are clawed up,” Derek answered.

“Mmm, I like having things answered for me.”

Melissa chewed the wounds on Stiles’ arms, clucking at Derek to get the bag she’d left nearby. Stiles let out a whine as Melissa cleaned out each individual claw mark with a liberal amount of burning antiseptic.

“I’m tired,” Stiles mumbled.

“I’ll give you something for the pain so you can get some rest, okay?”

“Am I going to be a werewolf in the morning?” she asked, looking up at Derek who stood behind Melissa like a tower.

“We don’t know if you were bit by an Alpha, but it is entirely likely that you will be a wolf in the morning. Your body hasn’t rejected the Bite if it were an Alpha.”

Stiles closed her eyes with that knowledge that she couldn’t stop herself from turning into wolf by worrying. She couldn’t really do anything by worrying, but given her history of panic attacks, she didn’t follow that philosophy very well.

“This is gonna pinch a bit,” Melissa warned before she pushed the needle into Stiles’ arm. She couldn’t even bring herself to wince. A motherly kiss brushed against her hairline. “Get some rest. I’ll come over to check on you in the morning.”

“Goodnight, Momma.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This installment comes as a present to [Meredith](http://www.2punk-rock4u.tumblr.com), who graduated high school on Sunday, and I am so happy for her! Love you, bby! Hope this is a good present for such a milestone in your life!


	9. Chapter 9

Stiles woke slowly the next morning, sun shining warm on her face and she stretched out on her bed. She reached her hands up towards the brick wall and her feet down towards the chest at the end of the bed. She felt the ache in her side as she moved, forgetting momentarily the events from the night before.

“Stop moving,” a deep voice grumbled sleepily.

“What?” she asked, still mostly asleep herself.

“Stiles, stop moving.”

“Stop cuddling me then,” she replied. He sat up and loomed over her, eyebrows judgmental again. She grumbled and wiggled in response.

“You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“I’m already hurt.”

He hummed and moved her onto her side singlehandedly.

“Listen, caveman, I don’t need to be manhandled. I can move just fine. I’m just a little sore.”

“You were bitten and attacked by a pack of werewolves less than twelve hours ago; you shouldn’t be moving.”

“Scott moved around just fine when he was bitten. Isaac and Erica and Boyd, they were fine. I’m a tough broad, Hale.”

“Just shut up and let me check to see if this is healed.”

“How long until we know I’m, you know,” Stiles asked, watching the top of Derek’s head intently as he pulled up her shirt- his shirt actually, which she didn’t remember taking hers off- and then peeled back the bandage. She was also wearing just her underwear and no pants.

“Twelve to twenty-four hours, generally. But it starts to show before then,” Derek said. “And it smells like healing. You don’t smell like healing, not increased healing anyway. I think you’re out of the woods. I don’t think they have an Alpha, at least they didn’t seem stable enough to have an Alpha.”

He replaced the bandage over her bite carefully, fingers pressing the edges back against her skin, and sat up.

“What do you mean? How do you know how they seem?”

“They threatened us, want our land, and our pack.”

“The guy who bit me, he told me to send a message to my Alpha. How’d they find me? Why’d they find me? I’m so far from Beacon Hills. If they want Beacon Hills, they’re looking in the wrong area code.”

“You’re important to this pack, even if you’re so far from Beacon Hills.”

“Did Scott do something to piss them off, then?”

“No,” Derek answered quickly.

“Then what do they want? What kind of message is this,” she asked, waving her hands violently towards her bandaged, burning hip, “supposed to send? What end does attacking me in Berkeley and making us think they changed me, reach? Scott wouldn’t care if I were a wolf or not.”

“It wasn’t for Scott. They’re confused, as to who is Alpha.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was the one that offended them, and I’m a Hale on Hale territory. One of the last Hales on Hale territory. I spoke for our pack. They assumed.”

“You, they think _you_ are the Alpha still.”

“Yes.”

“And this,” she said, gesturing again towards her hip and bloodied shirt and pants, “is supposed to achieve what?”

“Do you remember the omega you found on the side of the road?”

“And proceeded to be chased through the Preserve by? I’m familiar.”

“He has a pack, and I pissed them off. And they’re trying to take what I have, by attacking you, by following you around enough that it becomes a threat.”

“Why me, though?”

“You matter to me.”

Stiles scoffed and pushed herself out of Derek’s bed. She paced angrily, hands on her hips. She didn’t care that she wasn’t wearing pants, the white of her panties now brown with dried blood on the hip, or that she was wearing Derek’s shirt and the fabric smelt so strongly of him she didn’t want to take it off ever.

“Stiles, come back her-”

“No! Absolutely not, no!”

“What are you so mad about?”

“You do not get to tell me I matter, Derek. You do not get to say that those feral assholes attacked me to get to you. You do not get to do that, _especially_ because you broke up with me! Worse than that, you dumped me, when I thought we were- You made me think you and I were doing so well, that we were finally getting somewhere after all of our combined pussy-footing around, and then you ripped that right out from underneath me. You do not have any right to be protective of me.”

“Stiles, that’s a little ridi-”

“No! You know what is ridiculous, a man breaking up with his girlfriend after pretending to be happy and then having his pups follow her around. _That_ is ridiculous. You coming to Berkeley was ridiculous. You pretending you still care about me just to humor my dumb delusion of us actually having been something important to one another is ridiculous. But me, being angry at you is not ridiculous.”

“I’m not pretending!”

“You weren’t even happy with me, you asshole! Of course, you were fucking pretending!”

“You don’t get to tell me how I felt!”

“You told me your fucking self that you weren’t happy! I don’t know what this act now is all about, but you can drop it. Maybe you feel guilty because I’m a fragile fucking human who got caught in the crosshairs of your little pack war or maybe you’re trying to make me feel better about being a message by leading me on, but I don’t care anymore! It has to stop, so I’m going to Scott’s, I’ll see you later.”

She stomped over to his dresser and pulled out a pair of shorts she knew were too small on him and then stomped out of the loft, grabbing her keys off the table by the door where he must’ve put them. She slammed the sliding door as best as she could and stopped just long enough to pull the shorts on. She hurried down the stairs, tying the elastic close to her waist. It wasn’t until she stepped out of the building that she realized he also had taken off her shoes, and now she’d left her best pair of sneakers in his loft.

She crawled into her Jeep, groaning when she saw the blood stain she’d left on the seat and the door. Blood stains were a bitch to get out.

She checked her phone and scrolled through all of her messages from Jamien and from her suitemates, before dialing Jamien.

“Sarah! Thank god!” Jamien answered barely two rings into the call. “You’re okay!”

“Yeah, uhm, I bombed my test from last week,” Stiles lied easily. “And I just, I had to get out of town.”

“So you drove where?”

“Home.”

“Beacon Hills, right? Three hours away?”

“If you go a reasonable speed, sure.”

“I called your father, you know. He didn’t know where you were, either,” Jamien said, like she wasn’t sorry at all. Jamien was rarely sorry. Stiles loved that about her.

“I went to see him,” Stiles admitted, staring down at his shirt on her frame. She was thin, she’d always been thin without trying, but she looked tiny in his shirts.

“Not your father,” Jamien stated.

“No, my ex. Derek.”

“Derek, you went to see your ex-boyfriend because you failed a test?”

“I was overwhelmed, and I just wanted to cuddle something. He was nice enough, until he started talking about how I mattered to him, and we got into a fight, and now I’m just sitting in my car outside of his house wearing his clothes and I don’t know what to do or how to feel, and-”

“Why are you wearing his clothes? Did you _sleep_ _with him?_ ” Jamien interrupted.

“What? God, no. My virtue is intact, unfortunately. He just lent me his clothes, and I didn’t have a chance to change back before the fight, so, ex’s clothes.”

“Why don’t you come back? I’ll skip class, we’ll go shopping, we’ll eat a lot of ice cream, we’ll talk about how boys suck and how we should smash the patriarchy-”

“We should smash the patriarchy,” Stiles input.

“And we’ll marathon Reign because you’re in love with Mary, Queen of Scots,” Jamien said.

“She just reminds me of someone, I’m not _in love_ with her,” Stiles defended. The actress who played Mary was the spitting image of Cora, and the second Stiles had seen a commercial for it, she had dialed Cora and demanded to know if she was secretly an Hollywood actress and why the hell she had been holding out on her.

“Whatever, we’ll marathon it anyway, and argue about whether Mary should’ve been with Francis or Bash-”

“I still stand by that Bash would’ve been a better husband.”

“And I still stand by that you’re a damn fool if you don’t think Francis and Mary were destined.”

“He locked her in a tower! He put France before her! He-”

“We’ve agreed to disagree, Sarah.”

“Right.”

“Come back to Berkeley,” Jamien sighed.

“I will, I promise. There’s just, there’s someone I gotta see before I go.”

“Okay, well, I’ll be here. Call me when you get into town.”

“Will do. Thank you, Jamien.”

Jamien said goodbye and hung up, leaving Stiles in her car, engine still cold and anxiety churning in her gut. She called her father but got his voicemail.

“Hey Dad, it’s just me, obviously. Uhm, I wanted to let you know I’m alive. Uhh, I was at Derek’s, Melissa can testify that nothing funny happened. Well, mostly. Call me back, okay? Love you.”

She saved the message and hung up.

“Okay, Stilinski, time to woman up!”

She turned the Jeep on and drove to the McCall house before she could second guess herself. She let herself in with the key she’d duplicated and found Scott in the living room, blearily crunching on a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch while the news played in the background. She plopped on the couch beside him and apparently scared the hell out of him. His bowl of cereal jerked as he jumped, the cereal sloshing up and over the edge and right onto his shirt. Stiles snickered, hiding her face behind her hand as he stared.

“How did you sneak up on me?!”

“I didn’t sneak, I walked normally. You’re just really out of it, apparently.”

“I was up all night studying,” he groaned, setting the bowl on the side table with a yawn, brushing the soggy cereal pieces into his hand and depositing them in the bowl. “I heard you had an awesome night.”

She lifted up the edge of her shirt and peeled off the bandage.

“Whoa,” he said, pressing delicately on the skin around the bite.

“Yeah, pretty gnarly, huh? Derek says I’m not going to change, but I’m going to have one hell of a scar. That’ll be fun to explain to future partners. Oh, don’t mind that scar there, I just got attacked by a man-shaped wolf. It’s okay, please continue.”

Scott chuckled.

“Where you been, Stiles?”

“Trying to get my life back together, honestly. I’ve been a horrible friend. I never should’ve let Derek breaking up with me push apart, I’m sorry.”

“You better be.”

And just like that, Stiles and Scott were okay. She knew they were. Because in the grand scheme of their friendship, this was nothing. This was the longest they’d gone without talking, even including that summer she was shipped to Poland to stay with her Babcia and she could only write him letters. But they would always be okay. They were okay through Stiles’ mom dying when Stiles didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to eat, didn’t want to do anything, so Scott just sat with her and talked for her, nudged food towards her, did her homework for her until they were okay again. They were okay through Scott living with his dad for a while and only saw each other at school because Raphael McCall did not like Stiles and Scott hanging out at his apartment, so Stiles and Scott made up excuses to stay late at school to maximize their time together until Scott moved back in with his mom and they became reattached at the hip 24/7. They were even okay through Scott and Allison’s first couple of months together when Stiles just wanted to hit Scott upside the head for being so dumbstruck with love. And they were okay even when Stiles felt like Isaac was taking her best friend from her.

They were okay.

They would always be okay.

“How’s school?” Scott asked. Yeah, Stiles thought, they would be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I could not help the Reign commentary, I'm sorry! I recently marathoned it myself, and I'm sorry! This is not a spoiler-free world we live in!  
> Find me on [Tumblr](http://www.packyourbagsrightnow.tumblr.com)! Talk to me about Sterek, and Stora, and Sciles brOTPs, and whether Mary should've married Francis or Bash, and please, I'm desperately lonely!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I blackmailed my best friend into doing her homework, so I had to finish this chapter.  
> So here's to you, Meredith!

She had to promise her father she would call him, or Scott, or Jamien whenever she walked home from her class at night now every time, no matter what time she was let out or whether or not it only took 5 minutes to get from her classroom to her dorm room. She had to promise Scott that she’d call him the second anyone vaguely supernatural came near her, and to text him every single day regardless of supernatural occurrences. She had to promise Jamien that she would not go running back to Derek for comfort.

She did, because she was a good daughter, best friend, and roommate, mostly.

Her life went back to normal.

She went to class, she did her homework, she hung around campus with her suitemates and friends from her classes, she ate at whichever dining hall called their names around mealtimes, and she repeated it every day.

There was a curly-haired, too tall to blend in, not covert at all werewolf following her around again. She didn’t notice until the next Monday after her attack that Isaac as trailing behind her _everywhere_ , _all of the time_ , which truly showed how just oblivious Stiles and all of her friends were.

In fact, as if the universe enjoyed mocking Stiles, it wasn’t even Stiles that noticed he was there.

It was motherfucking Nathan.

“Who is that kid, Sarah?” he asked on their walk back from the nearest dining hall, a buffet with various home-cooked style dishes that never quite satisfied Stiles the way they were supposed to. Stiles turned, following Nathan’s thumb hooked over his shoulder. “He’s been hanging around for the past week or something, being everywhere you are. Does he have anything to do with that serial killer guy that came to the dorm?”

Isaac stared at Stiles as Stiles stared back at him.

“That’s Isaac. Don’t worry about him. He’s harmless,” Stiles said. Isaac raised his eyebrows at her as if offended. The boy was less than 20 feet away, so close she could tell that he wasn’t wearing a scarf today, just an expression that made him seem five years younger and a backpack. “You go on ahead, Nathan. I’ll see you back for Tyler’s event, though, I promise.”

 “Okay,” Nathan said quietly. “Text one of us if you need to.”

“Trust me; Isaac’s not going to hurt me.”

“Okay. See you later, Sarah.”

Nathan hiked his bag up on his shoulder and headed back for the Towers while Stiles waited for Isaac to catch up.

“Harmless?” Isaac asked, flashing his eyes golden before letting them return to their natural blue.

“Yes, harmless. You’re about as scary as a puppy. I thought this pup parade wasn’t necessary. I told Derek-”

“This isn’t about Derek,” Isaac cut in. “Well. This is about me and Derek disagreeing on certain things.”

“Like what?”

“You, for one.”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“What could you possibly disagree on that has to do with me?”

“How he handled breaking up with you, why he broke up with you, what he did after he broke up with you, how he handled the encroaching pack, how he handled you coming to him that night, I could go on.”

“Isaac,” Stiles sighed.

“You’re an important part of our pack. We all want to keep you safe, Derek included, but we’ve all went about this wrong.”

Stiles gestured for them to walk and Isaac started, letting her lead them while he continued.

“We shouldn’t have assumed you couldn’t handle yourself.”

“Clearly I can’t, though,” Stiles said, pulling up the edge of her shirt to reveal the healing bite. She had to be careful not to undress near Jamien or face her wounded side away from Jamien while she was dressing, just in case her roommate got curious. She couldn’t just pass this off as a bad hickey yet, especially not because Jamien knew she was single and not quite yet ready to mingle. “This is not a sign of a girl who can handle herself. I was careless and dumb and I was a liability to the pack.”

“Did Derek say that to you, because I will rip that boy limb from limb if he said those words?”

“No, but everyone must be thinking it. Must be an unsurprising headline in the McCall Pack Weekly. Token Human Gets Bitten By Non-Alpha,” she said bitterly.

“The only headline there was in the McCall Pack Weekly was that the McCall pack is bad at defending their own and how worried they all were about their pack mate.”

Stiles scoffed.

“You aren’t the token human,” Isaac went on to assure her.

“No, there’s Allison, but she doesn’t really count since she’s the daughter of a badass werewolf hunter and she can hold her own. Would you be this concerned if I were a boy?”

 “Yes.”

“Good to know it has nothing to do with my gender, then. It’s just that I’m a pathetic human who needs protection constantly.”

“Stop picking a fight with me, Stilinski,” Isaac stated. Stiles sighed.

“Sorry. I’m still keyed up from the whole thing last week.”

“Still?”

“It was kind of traumatic, if you hadn’t heard.”

“Yeah, I heard. Can I ask you something, though?”

“Sure.”

“Why Derek?”

“I don’t know, because I still love him. Because he’s a born wolf. Because he’s bitten three wolves. Because if I was going to die, I wanted to at least see him one more time. I was scared. I was scared and in pain and all I wanted to do was curl up into a ball and cry because my life is ridiculously unfair. I wanted to cuddle the fuck out of something and I wanted that something to be shaped like Derek Hale.”

“Even after he hurt you?”

“He told me he still cared about me,” Stiles mumbled.

“He did what?!”

“He was hanging around the dorm so I had Nathan tell him to fuck off and he sent me back this note telling me to be careful and that he still cared about me. And Wednesday, the morning after the attack, we got into a fight about him and me, and he told me I mattered to him, so that’s why they came after me.”

“I will kill him.”

Stiles smirked and pulled Isaac into a hug. Isaac was taller than Stiles by a good three inches, even though Stiles was on the taller end of the women’s height spectrum, but it wasn’t a bad hug. In fact, as soon as Isaac snapped out of his surprise and actually participated, it was nice and squishy and smelled of _pack_ and _home_ and _familiar_. She didn’t have Isaac’s nose but she knew what the pack smelled like. Her stomach and chest ached with the distance between her and Beacon Hills.

She drew back but ran her hands down Isaac’s arms, marking him with her scent.

“So, what are you doing in Berkeley? Couldn’t you have stayed with Scott if you and Derek are having marital problems?”

“I could’ve,” Isaac stated, ignoring her jab entirely, “but I wanted to be around someone who is as unhappy with Derek as I am.”

“I can understand that,” Stiles said, taking hold of one wrist and tugging him with her back towards the Towers. “Come on, you can stay with me until we figure out what to do about this whole Derek is a douche parade thing.”

“Douche parade?”

Stiles nodded enthusiastically.

“I figure that douche bag or douche waffle is not offensive enough. No, Derek is a whole parade of douches, a whole event of douche items just lined up in a row. Fitting, right?”

Isaac grinned.

“Can I ask something?”

“You can ask, I might not answer,” Stiles replied.

“Why Sarah?”

“Ahh. Yeah. That. I didn’t, I wanted something else when I came to school, after Derek. I didn’t want to be Stiles, which is crazy because I chose Stiles when I was a kid. I could’ve chosen anything, but I chose Stiles because that is who I am. But when I came here, I just wanted to be Sarah, plain, ordinary, completely human Sarah. And I could be. It was a new start.”

“Sarah,” Isaac tested.

“God, that sounds so wrong coming from you. Don’t.”

“Good, because you’re Stiles. You’ll always be Stiles to us, to the pack.”

-&-

“Hey,” Stiles said, opening the door to the suite. “Anybody home?”

“Sarah?” Meredith called, popping her head out of her door with a grin. “Oh, hello. Who’s this?”

“This is Isaac. That’s Meredith, Isaac,” Stiles introduced.

“Hi!” Meredith giggled before ducking back into her room.

“Come on, let’s see if Jamien’s back.”

“From what?”

“Class, working out, exploring, depends on the day,” Stiles replied, heading towards her door. She tried the handle, and then dug around for her keys. The door swung open just as Stiles pulled out her keys.

“Nathan said you might be bringing home a stray,” Jamien said in lieu of a hello, allowing them to step inside the room. She sank onto her bed, watching as Stiles took Isaac’s bag from him and set it on her own bed.

“This is Isaac. He’s less stray and more misplaced puppy.”

“I am no-”

“Shut up, yes, you are.”

“Well, stray or not, you are welcome here, Isaac. How long are you staying?”

Isaac and Stiles shared a look. Stiles hadn’t asked, and Isaac hadn’t brought it up, but they both knew that Derek would be in a foul mood for a while. His foul moods could last weeks, especially if the fight that caused the mood was about something he didn’t particularly want to talk about.

“As long as Stiles,” Isaac said, glancing at her, “wants me here, I guess.”

“You bring any scarves with you?” Stiles asked.

“No, didn’t think to.”

“Good. You can stay as long as you like, then.”

“Are there any rules about that?” Jamien asked. “I wasn’t paying attention at the floor meeting.”

“Ehh, I’ll figure a way around it,” Stiles said, pushing Isaac onto the bed. “Danny still owes me a favor, so maybe he could help.”

“Danny who?”

“Danny Mahealani, this kid from Beacon Hills. Computer whiz, little bit of a juvenile delinquent once.”

“As opposed to Stiles who was a little bit of a juvenile delinquent constantly,” Isaac said.

“I was never once arrested for any of my delinquencies,” Stiles reminded him.

“Your father is the Sheriff, Stiles. The Deputies actually kind of loved you. Of course, you were never arrested.”

Stiles shrugged.

“Semantics. Are you hungry?”

“Nah, I picked something up from the store while you were at dinner,” Isaac said. “That sounded less creepy in my head.”

“You’ve apparently been living with Derek too long,” Stiles commented.

“Wait, you know the ex?” Jamien asked, bouncing off her bed and closer to Isaac. Stiles sank into her desk chair and booted up her computer, listening to Isaac stutter out a yes. She wasn’t a particularly nice person, she knew that, so listening to Isaac squirm and stumble over his answers was kind of the highlight of her day.

“Sarah refuses to tell me anything about him,” Jamien stated.

“Okay?”

“And you know him, so you are going to tell me.”

“Uhhh.”

“What’s he like?”

“Grumpy.”

“Sarah?” Jamien said.

“Trust anything Isaac says unless I correct him. Isaac lives with Derek, so he knows,” Stiles confirmed, typing in her password and waiting for her computer to log in. She had had the same laptop since the end of freshmen year or so, and it had been through a lot of use. She had used it for all of her school papers, and then for all of her supernatural research, and her procrastination, and her porn habits. It had been through a lot, and it just kept going. She liked that in a computer.

“So, grumpy, huh? Like, old man grumpy or I hate the world and everything in it kind of grumpy?”

“Uhm, the latter, I guess.”

“Can you compare him to Grumpy Cat?”

“Yes,” Isaac and Stiles chorused.

“So you used to date Grumpy Cat,” Jamien hummed thoughtfully. “Is he attractive?”

“Yeah, I guess. I mean, I’m not attracted to him, but,” Isaac said. Stiles turned to watch him shrug.

“Do you have a picture of him?”

“Uhhh.”

“Jamien!” Stiles scolded.

“What?”

“You can’t just ask to see pictures of people!”

“Yes, I can. Now, come on, let me see.”

“He’s blisteringly hot, okay? Take my word for it,” Stiles replied. Isaac tugged his phone out and started to scroll through his gallery until he came to a decent picture of Derek. He turned the phone towards Jamien and she let out an honest to god gasp.

“Holy shit, Sarah. This is the ex? This is, holy shit.”

“Yeah,” Stiles said.

“You were dating, literally, the hottest man I have ever seen.”

“Yeah, I _was_.”

Jamien fell silent and Stiles glanced at her, finding the most contrite expression.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. I can talk about him without falling apart. You don’t need to be gentle with me; lord knows the rest of the world wasn’t.”

The corners of her perfectly pink lips fell down to the floor, and they trembled.

“Hey, don’t worry, Jay. I’m fine,” Stiles assured her, jumping out her chair and hurrying to her roommate. “I don’t need you feeling sorry for me, okay? I have been through hell and I have kept going, and I have survived. I have survived losses and baptism by fire and I don’t need you to feel sorry for me. Derek breaking up with me is just another bump in the road that I have survived. Don’t worry. I will be fine.”


	11. Chapter 11

“Holy shit, you are awful at this game. How are you this awful at this game?” Stiles asked, pressing the start button on the Xbox controller and turned to watch Isaac, sitting sadly on the couch in the lobby level community room. Isaac remained frowning at the screen, like it was the game’s fault that Stiles was kicking his ass. “You have superior reflexes, and I’m still beating you this bad. How?”

“I don’t really play video games,” Isaac said sadly with a shrug. “Dad always thought they were a waste of time, and Derek doesn’t own a television. And when I lived with Scott, we did other things.”

“Like make out and fondle each other?” Stiles guessed.

“No! Why are you convinced Scott and I are fucking?”

“So what other things do you do? Because Scott and I played video games and taunted each other all the time.”

“We did things, I don’t know. We did homework, and talked, and ran together.”

“And made out? You can admit it. I’m pretty sure Allison wanted in on it anyway.”

Isaac rolled his eyes.

“I am not discussing this with you.”

“Ah! But there is something to discuss then!”

“It was once, okay!”

“Oh my god! Isaac!” Stiles yelped, leaping onto the couch cushion and grabbing his arm, shaking him. “What happened? I was just fucking around with you, but oh my god! You _have_ to tell me!”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It _so_ matters, oh my god.”

“What? I kissed Scott, how is that of any importance?”

“Because Scott is my best friend, Isaac! He is my brother! He is my blood!”

“You’re not related.”

“He has been there for me since we were in pre-k together, of course it matters! And I’m trying to form a fledgling of a friendship with you, which means you have to trust me with things like this, things like you made out with Scott Anthony McCall! Does Allison know?”

“I don’t know, maybe.”

“Holy shit,” Stiles breathed out, collapsing onto the couch beside Isaac. “How was it?”

“How was what? Kissing Scott?”

“Yeah, because he’s a lot more experienced than he was when I kissed him.”

“You kissed Scott?”

“We were 15, and neither of us had been kissed yet, so we just did it. The next year, we met Allison and Scott became very, very experienced.”

“No one wanted to kiss you?” Isaac asked, brow furrowing in confusion. Stiles smiled and pat his cheek.

“I’m a hyperactive spaz, babe, no one wants to kiss me.”

“I’ll kiss you,” Nathan offered, plopping into the armchair beside Isaac. Isaac’s whole face turned sour, his eyebrows scrunched and his lips pulled down and an unease Stiles didn’t like settled in his eyes.

“No, thanks. I have Isaac for that,” Stiles answered, leaning against the werewolf who leaned possessively back into her. “Don’t I, pup?”

Isaac rolled his eyes.

“You do, indeed, Stilinski,” he replied.

She grinned and pressed a quick kiss into Isaac’s temple. She had the urge to scratch behind his ear but knew she would be risking life and limb if she did so.

“How long have you two been,” Nathan started to ask.

Isaac cut him off with a clipped tone, “Long enough that I would like you to stop making moves on my girlfriend.”

Nathan leaned away from Isaac, face contorting before he stood up and stomped off.

“I don’t trust that guy. If he gives you any trouble, I will fuck him up.”

“I didn’t even think you liked me, to be honest,” Stiles stated, leaning back and staring at the ceiling. Her eyes found a stray outlet on the ceiling, where she figured they might hook up a projector, but without it kind of looked ridiculous. All she could picture was a phone charger dangling from the ceiling, a phone attached to the other end, hanging on for dear life. “We always snapped and barked at one enough, pun intended, and we never got along.”

“We were still friends,” Isaac replied, while Stiles rolled her head to the side to look at him.

“Yeah, we were friends, but not friends that hung out and made jokes and played Call of Duty together. We were friends in that we had Scott and Derek in common.”

“We protected each other.”

“Barely. You tried to rip me apart in the station before Derek stepped in.”

Isaac shrugged.

“To be fair, going from abused child to super senses and deadly weapons is a bit of a power trip.”

Stiles hummed.

“I just don’t understand how this,” she said, gesturing between them, “even happened. When did we start being friends like this?”

“The moment we both started hating Derek, probably,” Isaac answered. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?”

Stiles laughed, loudly and surprised. Isaac watched for a second before joining in too, the pair laughing for no reason with the Call of Duty pause screen music playing in the background, and Stiles was, for the first time since August, extremely _happy_. With Isaac Lahey, of all people.

 

-&-

 

“Don’t freak out,” was how Stiles started the conversation with her father on Skype at the end of the week. She had somehow managed to keep Isaac out of the RAs’ and RD’s radar, but it might be hard to keep him off her father’s when he’s lounging on her bed.

“What did you do, Stiles?”

“I kind of, sort of smuggled Isaac into my room, and we’ve been living together for the past week.”

“Stiles.”

“So, Isaac, say hi to my dad,” Stiles said, rolling her chair away from the desk enough so that the Sheriff could see Isaac, sitting against the wall with Stiles’ Lit book open on his lap.

“Hello, sir.”

“Hello, Isaac,” the Sheriff said politely. “I assume this has something to do with why Derek has been skulking around town the past week or two.”

“Skulking, that is an excellent term applied to Derek Hale.”

Isaac hummed in agreement, going back to the short story he was reading. Jamien sat at the foot of her own bed with her textbook, highlighter poised for attack, while her eyes kept wandering, Stiles noticed, to the werewolf in Stiles’ bed.

“So, how’s college?” the Sheriff asked as Stiles slid her chair back into the camera’s view.

“It’s alright, no different than when you last asked me.”

The Sheriff closed his eyes and shook his head.

“Where did I go wrong, Stiles?”

“In so many ways, Dad,” Stiles said with a grin. “Are you eating healthy?”

“Yes,” the Sheriff said, but Stiles knew her father, knew the shift in his posture.

“You’re a liar, John Stilinski.”

The Sheriff shrugged.

“I will make a deal with your deputies, if you don’t start taking care of yourself.”

“You’re an evil child. Maybe I should’ve taken up Anka on her offer.”

“What offer? What did Babcia offer?”

“Oh, nothing, just to take you off my hands for the summers, and some of the school year.”

Stiles gasped.

“You would not! Don’t even joke!”

His expression didn’t change as she stared at his face on the screen.

“That’s it; I can’t talk to a traitor. I’m hanging up. Call me back when you’ve straightened up your act, young man.”

“One thing, Stiles,” the Sheriff said.

“What?”

“Love you, kid.”

She couldn’t stop herself from grinning.

“Love you too, Dad.”

She hung up the call and turned in her chair to watch Isaac and Jamien, but Jamien’s eyes had fallen on Stiles instead.

“What’s a, a, Bob-cha?”

“Babcia,” Stiles rolled the word off her tongue easily, Polish in her blood on both sides. “She is my grandmother, my mom’s mom. She’s Polish, like actually from Poland. She still lives there, actually, and my father and Babcia like to casually threaten to send me to live with Babcia and fully embrace my full-blooded Polishness.”

“I have something like that, sort of. My family hasn’t kept track of our origins, but my grandfather is really Italian, and he made us learn how to cook authentic Italian food and we have to know our history,” Jamien replied. “What about you, Isaac?”

Stiles turned her gaze to Isaac, who never shared and with good reason.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to share,” Stiles assured him.

“No, it’s okay. Thanks, though. My mom had this older aunt, but she raised my mom like she was her own daughter, and she was really kind, and really, really good at cooking, and she used to make me these cookies for my birthday, and she would make enough of them to pile them into a cake shape, and I got to eat the entire thing by myself if I wanted. Camden always begged and begged, because he always got brownies and ice cream for his birthday which was like a month before mine, but I loved him, so he got a couple, and I gave some to Mom, and even some to Dad.”

“What kind of cookies?” Stiles asked.

She’d weaseled a lot of things out of a lot people for various things, mostly to use as blackmail, but some for treats and presents, surprises. She found out Derek’s favorite kind of cake from Cora and Peter, the one that Talia used to make for his birthday, and left it for him for Christmas. The fact that his birthday was a day later was strictly coincidental. She had slipped a batch of muffins onto Jordan Parrish’s desk the day he found out his sister was sick, having snuck around to find out his ICE contacts and chatting them up. She always made hot chocolate, from scratch with Mexican cocoa like his _abuela_ makes, for Scott whenever he got down.

She wasn’t a particularly nice person, she wasn’t kind and she wasn’t generous. But she _could_ be, and she figured her acts of kindness towards those she cared about made up for her lack of fucks given to the rest of the world.

“Oatmeal with butterscotch and peanut butter chips,” Isaac said with a nostalgic smile. Stiles turned back and scribbled this information down in her notebook before tucking the notebook away. Stiles thought back to her mother baking cookies for Stiles to bring in to share with her class.

“Isaac,” Stiles said, turning to the werewolf.

“Stiles.”

“Were you in any of my elementary school classes?”

“Yeah, once, I think. Ms. Kaiser,” Isaac answered. “Why?”

“Mom used to bake these cookies for me to share with my class, to help make me friends other than Scott. They were these sugar monstrosities, with chocolate chips and M&Ms and she drizzled them in chocolate, and whenever I brought them in, my teacher’s would literally groan. My mom fielded so many angry teacher calls because of it, and calls from parents when their kids came home sugared and bouncing off the walls.”

“I remember them! I didn’t know they were pity cookies.”

“They were not pity cookies!”

“They were pity cookies, Stilinski. Your mother thought you were a lonely little girl and made you pity cookies,” Isaac assured her. “That’s kind of sad.”

Stiles wanted to make a comment about how Isaac didn’t have any friends until he was turned into a creature of the night, but held back for the sake of secrecy, and because she wasn’t that much of a dick.

Most of the time.

“Do you have the recipe to these sugar monstrosities? Because I would love some pity cookies,” Jamien interjected. “I’ll buy everything if you make them.”

Stiles chuckled, and started sifting through the files on her computer until she came across the scan of her mother’s cookie recipes. She started jotting down the ingredients into her notebook, while Jamien and Isaac discussed various attempts at cooking and baking, then various delicious dishes they’d been served, and Stiles couldn’t even bite back the smile anymore.

 

-&-

 

Stiles started baking cookies, and Stiles got very popular in Berkeley Towers very quickly. She propped open both doors to the kitchenette on the lobby floor, put on music, and baked like her mother used to. She wasn’t exact in her measuring, and she sometimes made her cookies too big (“There is no such thing as a cookie too big, Sarah!” Jamien had admonished her for saying one night) because she was too lazy to make smaller cookies and waiting for more of them to bake. If someone peaked their head in while Stiles was working, she’d hand them a cookie, and it became a thing.

“You should sell them,” Jamien had said one lazy Sunday while Stiles was baking to get her mind of her big midterm looming ahead of her. “I mean, you’re baking for the entirety of our dorm and you’re doing it out of pocket, which is half my pocket.”

“It’s one-third your pocket, simmer down.”

Isaac had been footing a third of the bill as well, which really meant that he was using a credit card that Derek had given him, so it was in actuality Derek Hale who was one-third baking for the entirety of Berkeley Towers.

That was the best part about this whole situation.

That and she was now on great terms with the RAs, the RD, and the RASMs, which made her life so much easier.

Stiles started selling her cookies, and she paid Isaac and Jamien back, which was really paying Jamien back and just giving Isaac money but she wasn’t about to go back to Beacon Hills and hand Derek the money she probably, technically owed him.

“Sarah! I need to ask you something real quick,” the president of the Activities Board for BT called, swinging into the kitchen. Her name was Ashley, Stiles thought, and she was this eccentric, brilliant girl who was very prompt and always had the sharpest eyeliner wings.

“What’s up?” Stiles asked, slapping at Isaac’s hand reaching for a cooling cookie. Isaac had the most ridiculous sweet tooth, and you had to keep an eye on him when he was near the cookies.

“We need your cookies for a fundraiser.”

“Okay.”

“That was easy,” Ashley said, looking surprised.

“Stiles is very easy,” Isaac commented.

“I will send you right back to Hale’s Depressing Loft Emporium where I found you, Lahey, remember that. I am not sentimental.”

Isaac laughed at that.

“Okay, Miss I Cried At the End of Firefly.”

“That was supposed to be a secret!”

“I cried at the end of Firefly, too,” Ashley input. “I mean, it was sad. You own your emotions, girl!”

Stiles stuck her tongue out at Isaac childishly. Isaac stuck his tongue out in return.

“How many do you need? When do you need them? Should I buy my own supplies or am I being funded?”

“We’re having a bake sale fundraiser, and we need a couple dozen cookies to sell. We’ll take you to pick up the supplies, so you can use our budget, and one of us will be with you while you make them, as a supervisor of sorts.”

“When’s this going down?”

“Next weekend.”

“Perfect, that’s right after a big paper is due, so I won’t be worried about that.”

Ashley promised to send her the details in an email and then dashed off, calling after someone else.

“What does it matter if you’re worried about a paper or not?”

Stiles pulled a pan of cookies out of the oven and prodded at one with her finger before sliding the sheet onto the stovetop nearby.

“My mom used to say that you shouldn’t go into baking with a sour heart, or else your goodies will come out sour too. I sometimes bake to de-stress, and the first batch is always the least tasty, in my opinion, so I don’t like to bake when I’m upset or stressed.”

“Huh,” Isaac said.

“So, kissed any boys lately?” Stiles said out of the blue, because she liked to rile Isaac up. He growled. “If it makes you feel any better,” Stiles said with a sad realization, “I haven’t either.”

Isaac got up and stood at Stiles’ side while she lifted the cookies easily from the sheet and laid them to cool on the counter. She looked at him and he tipped her head back, and kissed her. Stiles, starved of any kisses since August, slid her free hand not holding the spatula up Isaac arm to his neck, holding him close. He pressed her into the counter, one hand holding onto her hip.

She broke the kiss first as her last resort timer for the cookies dinged.

“Oh, wow. Why?”

“I dunno, everyone else in the pack has done it,” Isaac answered, moving away and returning to his seat.

“What? Are you kidding me?”

Isaac shrugged casually.

“Derek must be one hell of a kisser, though,” Isaac wondered aloud.

“I am so lost.”

“Your first kiss was when you were 15, only three years ago, and your majority of kissing experience has been with Derek, and you are a fantastic kisser for someone who’s only kissed like three people.”

“It’s been more than three people,” Stiles grumbled, turning her back, her cheeks burning. It was, though. The number of people she had kissed since Scott was turned had multiplied exponentially, which was bizarre when you were a dorky, hyperactive, average looking girl with a boy’s name.  

“Really?”

“You said I’ve kissed the entire pack, Isaac.”

“So that would be Scott, Derek, Lydia, Allison, Malia definitely, Kira too?”

“Kira too. And Cora before Derek took her back to South America.”

“Damn, girl.”

“It was just a couple of tiny kisses, it’s not a big deal.”

“Did you kiss Liam too?”

“No! Why would I kiss the baby?”

“Because you seem to have no problem making out with everyone else, so,” Isaac said, giving her his most adorable grin when she turned to look at him, resting her hip on the counter.

“You’re an asshole. Why are we friends?”

Isaac shrugged.

“You and I are a match made in heaven, Stilinski.”

Stiles sighed. He was right. They really were. They were both assholes, wired more for sarcasm and biting comments than for kindness. They had a lot of similar interests, ones she hadn’t ever noticed in the two plus years he’d been a werewolf.

“Apparently.”

“However,” Isaac continued, “while you are very attractive, and as I said, a fantastic kisser, I am not exactly interested.”

“Yeah, I noticed you’ve been a little distracted, recently.”

“Don’t even, I don’t like Jamien that way.”

“Then, Scott and Allison?”

Isaac sighed and nodded in return.

“You know, you could just talk to them about it.”

“And ruin two really great friendships with a hey, I kind of want to get in on this star-crossed lovers bit you’ve got going on?”

Stiles finished doling out the last batch of cookies onto the sheet and slid the pan back into the oven, and restarted the timer.

“Listen, I’ve known Scott for 14 years, Isaac.”

Isaac made a motion that Stiles took to mean _obviously_.

“I know him inside and out, and trust me, _trust me_ , dude, he would be all over you wanting in on it.”

Isaac shook his head. Stiles wasn’t having any of that. She marched over to the beta, pushed his chair out and sat on his lap, cupping his magnificent jawline in her hands.

“Listen to me, Isaac Jonathan, Scott and Allison would be lucky to have you. They would, don’t give me that face. You are gorgeous, and smart, and have this weird sense of humor that Scott will definitely already know what to do with. You’re loyal, and you’re tough. You’ve been through so much, and here you are, still going. You are a motherfucking catch, and don’t you forget it.”

She rested her forehead against his and sank against him.

“If you want, I’ll talk to Scott about you, see what he thinks.”

“He’s gonna know why,” Isaac replied.

“No, he’s not. I’m super sleuth Stilinski!”

 

-&-

 

Super sleuth Stiles was not, apparently.

She called Scott later when Jamien, Meredith, and Isaac headed downtown for ice cream. Stiles claimed that she had to start researching for her paper, which she did, but really, she wanted to call Scott and talk to her best friend for a while uninterrupted. He answered on the third ring with a joyous, “Stiles!”

“Scotty!”

Stiles flopped into a chair in the lounge by the window, looking out over the campus.

“I was beginning to think you’d forgotten my number,” Scott replied.

“Nah, I’d never.”

“You did once, though. Sixth grade, I moved in with Dad for a little bit. You could not remember that number to save your life, dude.”

“Okay, but it was sixth grade, Scott. You have to give me so leeway in relation to middle school.”

“That’s the only leeway you’re getting.”

Stiles chuckled.

“Oh, hey, I gotta talk to you about something.”

“What?”

“I kissed Isaac.”

“O-oh? You did?”

“Well, Isaac kissed me, and we got to talking, and did you and Isaac have a moment, Scott?”

“What? No! Why? What did he tell you?”

“Come on, Scott. It’s just me here. You’ve told me far worse things that I didn’t want to hear.”

“So we kissed, a couple times.”

“That’s your I’m not lying but I’m not telling you the whole truth voice, Scott.”

“Fuck, what do you want from me, Stiles? To hear that I made out for over an hour with a guy that is not my girlfriend? Because I already feel awful about it.”

“You don’t have to, y’know.”

“What? Feel bad for cheating on Allison?”

“Hate yourself for liking it,” Stiles said gently. Scott took a deep breath and then, slowly, audibly let it out.

“I know. There’s nothing wrong with me. I just, I want them both, Stiles. I want to kiss Isaac and cuddle with him just as much as I want that with Ally, and I can’t make myself decide.”

“What if you just didn’t? Decide, I mean. People have polyamorous relationships, and that’s okay. As long as Allison and Isaac are both willing and consenting to sharing you, then there is no reason in the universe for you all not to get what you want.”

“Does Isaac, you know, feel the same way?”

“Dude, do you think I would be trying to push you into this if I didn’t know for sure that both of you were itching to get it? Just, don’t tell Isaac I mentioned that. He didn’t want you to know just in case you didn’t want what he wants, which I’m positive you both want it. Just, I dunno, talk to Ally A, get back to me and I’ll return your beta when you’re ready to make beautiful threesomes with them.”

“Stiles,” he groaned on the other end.

“One of us has to get laid, Scotty, and it’s back to not being me.”

“Was it ever you?”

“Not really,” Stiles sighed, kicking her feet up onto the wooden bar that stretched across the window. “I mean, Derek and I went at it, but we were kind of waiting until I turned 18.”

“Which is soon!” Scott reminded her happily.

“Yeah, it is. I think I might drive home, have dinner with Dad. I need to bring Isaac back eventually anyway. Want to make your move then?”

“You okay with me taking your new best friend away from you on your birthday?”

“Yeah, I’m kind of sick of him anyway,” Stiles joked. She wasn’t. She wasn’t sure she could be. She was learning more and more about Isaac every single day, and he was getting under her skin in ways she wasn’t sure anyone but Scott ever would. “I also need to talk to you about something, and it’s the kind of thing that needs to happen in person.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I just, it’s serious, it’s a serious, life-changing kind of thing.”

“Not a phone call from three hours away thing, then.”

“Not exactly.”

“Okay, well, two weeks,” he said. “Two weeks, and I will see you, and we will talk about this serious, life-changing thing. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Listen, I gotta go, I have to take lunch to Mom, but I’ll see you soon, Stiles.”

“Yeah, see you soon, Scotty.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note; I changed my tumblr URL, so any links I have posted in previous chapters heading in the direction will no longer lead you in the right direction. The new URL is www.deputy-heart-eyes.tumblr.com.
> 
> Second QN; I had a plan forming for Jamien/Isaac, but I had Isaac mention his kissing Scott and I just kind of went after that with an insane amount of excitement. Woops. So unexpected background Scallisaac, woo!


	12. Chapter 12

“Happy birthday, Sarah!” Stiles’ suitemates chorused as Isaac packed up his stuff and Stiles searched around the room for her keys. The entirety of her suite then filed into the room with giggles and grins.

“Okay, we know you said you didn’t want anything for your birthday, and we promised that we wouldn’t get you anything, but we’re all liars,” Jamien said with a wicked grin. She held out a bag to Stiles. “We kind of pooled together our money, so it’s a group effort. But if you don’t like it, Erika totally came up with it.”

“Don’t throw me under the bus!” Erika protested.

“You don’t sleep in the same room with her!”

“To be fair,” Stiles said, taking the bag from Jamien and setting it on her desk, “neither of you have to share a bed with me.”

“She kicks,” Isaac commented.

“Oh, yeah, Lahey? Well, you starfish the entire bed.”

“You both snore, so I don’t want to hear it,” Jamien said. Stiles tugged open the bag’s top, and pulled out the tissue paper, throwing it over her shoulder. A folded multi-brown garment sat folded at the bottom, surrounded by a heap of her favorite candies. Stiles looked warily at it and then at her friends. She reached inside and pulled it out. It was a tank top that unfolded as she lifted it, falling open to reveal the best tank top she had ever seen. She recognized it from her online window shopping adventures. It was a hooded tank that looked like an Ewok from Star Wars, the hood complete with little ears.  

“Oh my god!” she squealed and bounced excitedly. “This is beautiful! Oh my god, guys!”

She threw herself into the middle of her suitemates and pulled as many into a group hug as she could manage. They laughed and piled into a hug around her.

“You guys are the best! You seriously are! I couldn’t have asked for a better set of suitemates!”

“We couldn’t have asked for a better suitemate, either,” Meredith replied. Stiles pressed wet kisses into as many cheeks as she could reach, laughing and trying to will the tears of pure joy out of her eyes.

“Hey Stiles, we gotta get on the road if you wanna catch your dad before his shift,” Isaac reminded her.

“Right! Right! Of course!” Stiles said, extracting herself from the pile and stepping to her desk. “I expect you guys to party this weekend, and do it safely, as a present to me.”

“I have to stu-” Jamien started.

“No. It is my eighteenth birthday, Jamien Marie, and you will party in my absence. Meredith and Meaghan!”

“Yeah?”

“I task you with making sure this one,” Stiles said, jabbing her finger at Jamien while she gathered her things, “gets out and makes out with someone.”

“Aye-aye, Deputy!” Meredith said with a grin at her sister.

“That’s terrifying, why would you leave me with that?” Jamien complained.

“Sorry, toots. I want to see my dad, so I’m gonna have to leave you now. Come, pup,” Stiles said as she lugged her bags onto her shoulders. She checked for her keys and wallet, then her phone before nodding to herself.

“Say bye to Isaac. He’s going home for a while.”

The group let out a collective sad noise and rushed to hug Isaac one by one. Isaac, a strangely good sport for being such a hot head, hugged each other girls and promised he’d be back soon. Stiles ushered them out of the suite after.

“You gonna miss it here?” she asked while they were dragging their stuff to the residence lot where the Jeep was parked.

“I don’t know. I just want to sleep in a bed alone.”

“Heh, fuck you.”

Isaac grinned at her.

“Nah, I think I’ll miss it here. I mean, maybe not having to share a twin bed, but you, I guess. And your suitemates are pretty cool.”

“Awe, you big ol’ softie.”

“Shut it,” Isaac laughed. “I like it on campus, and if I didn’t already make a good amount of money for what I do, I might consider going to school. But, I don’t know. Is it worth it?”

“Dude, I don’t know. I’m so in debt already and I just started school.”

“So are you telling Scott about the-?”

“Yeah, I am. I already told my dad on the phone, but I need to do this in person with Scott.”

“You know Scott isn’t going to mind.”

“I know. Scott’s literally the chillest guy in the world, but I still need to sit him down and explain why I’m doing this.”

“You’re a better friend than most people.”

“Why’s that?”

“Most people would’ve sent him a text telling him and then they wouldn’t have responded when he texted back.”

Stiles laughed this time.

“After everything we’ve been through, we could stand to be a little more honest with each other.”

 

-&-

 

The drive home was filled mostly by Isaac and Stiles singing along to New Found Glory and All Time Low at the top of their lungs while the wind whipped through their rolled down windows. It was good. It was a good way to say goodbye, Stiles thought.

Not that they were saying goodbye forever, she amended after. But it would be strange not having Isaac around all the time.

She dropped Isaac off outside of Derek’s loft, and promised she’d call once she was done talking to Scott. She made her way home and pulled in beside her dad’s truck in the driveway. She left all of her stuff inside of the Jeep and flung herself out of it, just as the front door opened. She raced up the steps and launched herself into the Sheriff’s arms for a hug, causing him to stumble back.

“Hey kid.”

“Hey Daddy.”

“I missed you,” the Sheriff breathed as she buried her head into his neck.

“Missed you.”

“Come on in,” he said, letting her go and ushering her into the house as if she hadn’t lived there since she was a baby. “How’s your side?”

“All healed up, see?”

She tugged up the two layers of shirt to show him the healed bite mark.

“That is gonna be hard to explain come summer.”

Stiles dropped both shirts back into place.

“It’s been hard to explain to my roommate, too.”

“Where’s Isaac, then?” the Sheriff asked, leading them into the kitchen.

“Oh, I dropped him off at Derek’s.”

“Did you go to see-”

“No, I didn’t. I just dropped him off outside. I didn’t, I don’t want to see him.”

“It’s okay if you do, you know.”

Stiles shrugged and slid into a seat at the island, tapping on the counter while her father poured himself a travel mug of coffee. He looked exactly the same as when she left, but there was something different about him, too.

“What is this smile about?” she asked, waving at his face.

“Am I not allowed to be happy that my daughter’s home?”

“No, no. It’s not that kind of smile.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Dad. Do you have a girlfriend?”

The Sheriff tried to look offended, tried to look like Stiles hadn’t just caught him red-handed, but a smile replaced the expression and he looked down at his coffee.

“We were going to wait and tell you two at Thanksgiving.”

“Two. Wait. Are you dating Melissa? Dad!”

“Yes, and I want to make sure you are completely okay with this before Melissa and I decide to get serious.”

“Dad,” Stiles sighed. She got out of her chair and circled around. She took her father’s face in her hands. “Hey, listen. I want you to be happy. And I want Melissa to be happy. If you two make each other happy then I cannot in good conscience stand in the way, not that I would want to.”

He smiled at her and looked down at his hands, at his wedding ring.

“Mom would want you to be happy, too,” she reminded him, dropping her hands. “You know she would.”

“Stiles,” the Sheriff sighed.

“Also, you could finally have that son you supposed to have always wanted. I mean, not that Scott hasn’t already taken that spot, since he’s my soulmate and everything.”

“Trust me, you were handful enough growing up that I never imagined having a son.”

“Hmm, when does your shift start?” Stiles asked, moving back to her seat.

“15 minutes. Why? Are you going to throw a rager as soon as I’m gone?”

“Oh, yes, you caught me. I’m having strippers and a keg and we’re all going to do LSD and watch the Teletubbies.”

“Well, just try not to get caught. I would hate to arrest my own daughter the day before her birthday.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, but I cannot hold myself accountable if Mr. Jenkins gets nosey again.”

“To be fair,” the Sheriff replied, “Donald saw an older man crawling through your window at 2 in the morning.”

“It was just Derek,” Stiles said with a wave.

“You were still 16 at the time, and Derek is in his twenties.”

“We weren’t doing anything, except for trying to stay alive.”

The Sheriff fixed her with a flat look.

“And to people who weren’t privy to supernatural terrors?”

“Okay, I admit it was a bit sketchy that a grown man was crawling through the window of a teenaged girl.”

“That’s all I wanted to hear. I have to go. Be good.”

He pressed a kiss into her temple, and left the kitchen. She remained in her seat as she heard the truck’s engine rumble to life and then as her father pulled out of their driveway. She looked around her childhood home, took in all of the things she hadn’t seen in weeks. She found the crack in her mother’s antique mirror where Scott had accidentally kicked a soccer ball into a lamp and the lamp had hit the mirror. She found the scorch mark on the floor where a witch had chased her with fire balls through the house in their senior year. She even found the spot hiding behind the entertainment stand where Stiles, as a toddler, had decided needed a little bit more color when Claudia hadn’t been looking.

This was her home, whether she needed to get out of Beacon Hills or not.

She could always come back here, and feel safe, even if she’d been terrorized by the supernatural in this very house before.

She headed out to get her stuff from the car, mainly a bag of laundry that she didn’t want to have to pay to clean and some summer clothes she needed to trade for her warmer supply. Scott came trotting up the driveway on Stiles’ second trip, watching her lug a heavy bag of laundry with a smirk.

“You could help, you prick,” she grumbled, trying to tug the bag up the steps to the front door.

“But watching you struggle is so much more fun.”

“Some true alpha you are, then.”

Scott and Stiles broke out into identical grins and she dropped her laundry as Scott engulfed her in a hug. They talked nearly every day, on Skype or on the phone, and they talked about everything in their lives. The distance Stiles had put between them wasn’t driving a wedge between them like she’d thought it might, like she’d let it in the first month of school. She knew every detail of Scott’s life, down to his class schedule and his professors’ weird quirks, but just being close to him like this was still what she missed the most, what she always wanted.

She had contemplated going to Colombia or NYU for a while during senior year. She had gotten accepted to plenty of the top colleges around the USA. Hell, she’d considered MIT and Cornell (she was .2 seconds away from choosing Cornell when she saw a shirt that proudly stated that “Ithaca is gorges” before she got her Berkeley acceptance letter), but ultimately, she knew she would miss her pack too much. Plus, she couldn’t bug her father to eat healthy quite as much if she lived on the east coast.

She wondered if she’d ever make it out there or if she’d stay on the west coast (best coast, her mind chimed) for her entire life.

“Dear god, if you smelled anymore like Isaac, I might think you two have been sleeping together,” Scott joked, stepping back.

“To be fair,” Stiles started, “Isaac and I technically have been sleeping together.”

Scott’s face fell.

“But in the strictly sleeping kind of way. We shared a bed, and I think he wore some of my clothes a couple times, and we spent every day of the past few weeks together, so yeah, I guess I would smell a lot like Isaac.”

“It’s weird, though,” Scott said, finally grabbing up Stiles’ laundry bag and hoisting it over his shoulder like it weighed nothing. He led the way into the house before elaborating. “There are scents with Isaac’s, newest is your father’s, but there’s so many others, but I can still only smell Isaac if I don’t concentrate.”

“Maybe that’s because you like how Isaac smells?” Stiles suggested.

“I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. Are you sure you and Isaac weren’t more?”

“I kissed him once, and he did that because I was throwing myself a pity party. There’s nothing between Lahey and I other than complete platonic admiration for the other’s existence.”

“I’m still confused how that happened.”

“Man, so am I. Can you haul that to the washing machine, actually?” Stiles asked as Scott went to put the bag down by the stairs. He made a face at her and moved towards the laundry room off the kitchen.

“Hey, while I’m here, you want to tell me what your serious news is?”

“Oh, right! Okay, I’m gonna go close the door first,” Stiles said, heading back to the front door to close it. She sees Mr. Jenkins staring at her from his garden. She waves with a grin and then closes the door. “I think Mr. Jenkins is onto me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I think he’s figuring out that you’re a werewolf and so is the man who used to crawl through my window.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Doesn’t matter. We should sit, because this is a sitting kind of conversation.”

“That’s terrifying to think about. I’ve changed my mind. Let’s not talk about this. Go back to Berkeley and send me a text.”

“Fuck you, I’m already here so sit your fine ass down.”

Scott sank into a seat on the couch and Stiles took a seat in her father’s recliner, pushing her hair behind her ear.

“Okay, I need to talk to you.”

“I’m aware of that.”

Stiles narrowed her eyes at him.

“I could do without your snark, McCall. This is not a snarky matter.”

“All matters are snarky matters with you.”

“This one’s serious, I guess. I don’t know. I want you to know that this isn’t personal. I mean, it is. It is personal, because it’s me, and it’s you, and y’know, you’re my brother, and I don’t want you to think that I am doing to this spite you, or hurt you, or try and get away from you, because I would never do that, trust me, bro, I couldn’t d-”

“Stiles.”

“Right. Sorry. So, I love our lives.”

“Okay?”

“I mean, I do. Between the running for our lives and the running to save lives and the money I’ve spent on baseball bats, and you know, the wounds and the deaths and the, y’know, evil fox demon spirit possessions and the overall shittiness, I do love our lives. How cool is it that we get to be a part of this world? This supernatural badassness? Well, you do. I just tag along.”

“Stiles.”

“I know, I know. I’m rambling. Just, I’m getting there.”

“Okay.”

“I love learning about the things that might come and get us one day, what we could potentially face.”

“But,” Scott added for her.

“But,” she stressed, “I don’t want my _whole_ life to be worrying which fable is going to come to try and kill us next. I want to make a difference, so I changed my major.”

“What made you change your mind? I mean, you were pretty set on being an emissary, my emissary just a few months ago. What happened?”

Stiles shrugged.

“I don’t, I don’t know. I got attacked by a group of Alpha-less werewolves who wanted to hurt Derek by hurting me, and I went looking into some werewolf attacks on campus.”

“You did what?”

“And I felt utterly useless. I was this weak little girl that needed to run, needed to be saved, and I don’t, I don’t want to feel like that my entire life. I mean, I realize that not taking the emissary position will in no way help me in supernatural life or death situations should they arise, but I want to do something, something not supernaturally inclined, in my life, you know?”

“I get that.”

“And I mean, I’ve been living with Isaac for like a month.”

“Ah,” Scott finally said, like he’d solved the entire puzzle.

“What? What, ah?”

“Isaac.”

“Isaac,” Stiles agreed.

“He’s a powerful force, that one,” Scott started, shifting back to lean into the couch more. “Just, what’d you change your major to?”

“Social welfare.”

“Cool, cool.”

“You have no idea what that is, do you?”

“Not a damn clue.”

She laughed and ran her hand through her hair.

“It’s social work, basically.”

Scott’s face split into a grin, knowing like the smug bastard he is.

“Yeah, fuck you,” she said with a roll of her eyes. Scott bounced out of his seat, quite literally bounced, and threw himself into her. She wrapped her arms around him as he smiled into her neck.

“You’re gonna save the world,” he mumbled.

“Nah,” she said, pushing him off onto the recliner beside her and throwing her legs over his. “I’ll leave that to you and the rest of the pack. You’re more, y’know, inclined to that anyway, Mr. True Alpha.”

Scott nodded.

They sat like that for a few minutes before Stiles nudged him with her elbow.

“Are we okay? I mean, I know I _said_ I would be your emissary, and this is throwing all kinds of wrenches into that plan. So, you’re not mad?”

“Stiles, is this what you want?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Then, how on Earth could I stop you?”

 

-&-

 

She called Isaac.

“Is it done?” he asked in lieu of an actually greeting.

“Wow, that’s a hell of a hello, Lahey,” Stiles laughed, kicking at Scott to jolt him awake. They’d decided to have a few hours to themselves before Stiles called the pack over. They’d started the Die Hard series, and Scott was close to passing out on the couch where he’d relocated. “Yeah, I told him. It’s all good.”

“As if it was going to turn out any other way,” Isaac scoffed. “You want us to come over?”

“Us?”

“Yeah, Cora’s here, and we’re gonna pick up Allison and Kira on our way over.”

“Yeah, come on over, then. You guys want pizza or Chinese?”

“Pizza,” Cora said from the background.

“Okay, I’ll get our usual.”

“See you in a few, Stilinski,” Isaac said, before hanging up.

Stiles kicked Scott again to ask, “you got some money to pitch in for pizza?”

“Pizza?” Scott yawned sleepily. “We’re getting pizza?”

“We are,” Stiles said, dialing their usual pizza place, a nice family-run restaurant with two different names depending on who you were. Stiles had always called it New York Pizzeria (the owners were from New York, and thus made New York-style pizza), but her father who had grown up in Beacon Hills and had known the owners’ father, called it by its original name of Frankie’s. It didn’t matter, either way. If you called it by either, everyone knew you were talking about the place.

“New York Pizzeria,” the usual friendly voice answered.

“I’d like to place an order under Stilinski.”

“This for the station or for the kid.”

“The kid,” Stiles said with a laugh. Stilinskis had a reputation for ordering a lot of food at a lot of restaurants around Beacon Hills. “I need four large pizzas.”

“One pepperoni, one cheese, one meat lovers, and one veggie,” the worker replied.

“Yeah, you got it. A large order of the cheese sticks with extra marinara,” she continued.

“You need a calzone or mozzarella sticks today?”

The mozzarella sticks were normally for Lydia, who was off at Stanford rocking the mathematics department and the calzone always went to Derek.

“Nah, we’re good. Can we get two two-liters of soda, though? One Pepsi, one Mountain Dew?”

“Yeah, is that gonna be all today, kid?”

“Yupp, what’s the damage?”

“It’s gonna be 59 dollars and 15 cents,” he replied.

“Oh, you are killing me.”

“Sorry, kid. You want that delivered to your house?”

“Yeah, 37 Cedar Ave.”

“It’s gonna be about 45 minutes,” the worker said.

“Thanks!”

Stiles hung up.

“Thirty bucks, bro,” Stiles said, kicking Scott again.

“You do that again I’m going to bite you.”

“Oh, kinky. Didn’t know we were there yet,” Stiles said before getting up to take out Die Hard and push it back onto the shelf of her dad’s collection. Scott rolled onto his side, hair sticking up in adorable places, as he watched her.

“Are you happy?” he asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be? I’m home. There’s pizza coming. The pack’s coming over, most of them.”

“Even though Derek-”

“Dating Derek was not my sole purpose and reason for living, Scott. It hurt, yeah, and it still does. Sometimes I don’t want to get out of bed because I had that fleeting time of complete bliss with an amazing guy, but I do get out of bed. I keep putting one foot in front of the other. I will survive,” Stiles said with a smile. “You don’t need to worry about me, okay, bro? I’m good. I’m okay. I’m happy.”

“That’s all I want.”

 

-&-

 

Stiles and Scott were in the middle of discussing which pop culture best friend duo they would be when Isaac let himself into the house, Kira, Cora and Allison following.

“What? Because I let you live with me in a tiny room for a few weeks you think you’re entitled to my entire life now, Lahey?” Stiles asked, cutting Scott off mid-sentence.

“Well, yeah,” Isaac replied, plopping onto the seat beside her on the couch. “I’ve seen you mostly naked, remember?”

“There are a lot of people who have seen me close to naked. It’s called a bathing suit.”

Isaac laughed.

“Okay, point taken. Just remember that I’ve seen your homework letters.”

Stiles couldn’t stop her eyes from widening or her mouth from dropping open. One of her assignments had been to write letters to her friends and family of thing she couldn’t say out loud, and to reveal something about herself and what she’s learned so far in her classes. She’d written letters to her dad, to Scott, to Lydia, to Allison, to her mother even. But she knew, she just _knew_ the one Isaac was talking about was the one she wrote to Derek.

They’d had a lengthy conversation, her and Isaac, about her relationship with Derek and how she still stupidly loved him despite what he’d done, and Isaac had shaken his head at her.

They’d had a lot of lengthy conversations in the weeks Isaac stayed, including what Isaac did all day while Stiles was in class (he worked, since he and Derek were partners in a freelance web design company that Stiles had no inkling about before), and what they did on Mother’s Day (they both went to the cemetery and talked to their moms), and everything that brought them closer.

It was bizarre having a friend so close that wasn’t Scott.

It was terrifying, as well.

“Don’t you dare, Isaac,” Stiles hissed. He winked at her and grinned.

“What would you like to do on your final night of being a minor?” Cora asked, flopping onto the other couch cushion to Stiles’ right.

“When did you get back from South America?”

“A couple weeks ago. I thought Derek would’ve, oh.” Cora cut herself off. “That’s right, my brother’s an asshole.”

“Yeah, he is,” Kira agreed. The rest of the pack joined in and Stiles stared down at her hands, torn between agreeing and telling them off. She decided on neither, and did what she did best, ignore and change the subject.

“Pizza’s coming in about half an hour,” she started. “Anybody want to pitch in, because I’m broke as fuck?”

“No, you’re not. You’ve been selling cookies like you’re Betty fucking Crocker or some shit,” Isaac said.

“Okay, first of all, fuck you, Lahey. Second of all, anybody want to pitch in, because it’s my birthday tomorrow?”

Cora dug out her wallet and handed over a single, new hundred dollar bill.

“Let the poor delivery guy keep the change, especially since you’ve probably given him a hard enough time over the years, changing the order depending on who is or isn’t here,” Cora said when Stiles opened her mouth to protest.

“Where did you even get this? Are you Walter White in your spare time?”

“Nah, I just have a good job.”

“How the fuck do you and Isaac have these good jobs? I don’t understand! You’re not any older than I am!”

“We have connections,” Cora said with a wink. “Now, what do you want to do?”

“I want to kick your asses.”

“Video games it is!”

 

-&-

 

Stiles woke up the next morning in a pile of limbs with what she was pretty sure could only be described as a sugar hangover. Her mouth was full of Kira’s hair, and tasted like death (she’d experienced death before, it was pretty comparable), and there was someone who had their face mashed into the back of her knee letting out sleepy, wet snuffles. They’d went hard the night before, the pizza demolished in under ten minutes, and the rest of the night spent playing various competitive games. She had destroyed the rest of them in Call of Duty, but Cora had absolutely murdered her at Mario Kart (which, fair, she had better reflexes), and Scott had surprisingly gotten good at Halo, teaming up with Isaac to slaughter them when they weren’t paying attention. And weirdly, Kira who was just as uncoordinated as Stiles most of the time devoured them at Just Dance.

“What the fuck,” she croaked out, looking around. The time of the cable box said it was just after 10, and her father was already awake judging from the sounds of the coffee pot gurgling and spitting in the kitchen. She wriggled her way out of the pile the pack had collapsed into some point during the night. She stepped between them until she got to the dining room and looked at her pack. Isaac and Scott were mashed together with Allison using Scott’s stomach as a pillow, Cora and Isaac’s feet were tangled together while Cora was using Kira’s stomach as a pillow, and there was a space where Stiles had been, her head just inches from Kira’s and her knee being used as Isaac’s cuddle buddy. She smiled and dug her phone out of her pocket, snapping a photo and uploading it to Facebook with the caption “ **Nothing like a pack pile to start your birthday off right!** ” and proceeded to tag each of them in it.

She wandered into the kitchen to find her father nursing a cup of coffee.

“Good morning!” he chirped.

“You’re unusually chipper this morning,” Stiles stated. “Especially considering what you came home to find.”

“What? You piled with the pack? Not the worst thing I’ve found, honestly. None of you are hurt, there’s not blood all over the carpet, and no one’s naked. It’s fine. Besides, can’t I be happy on my favorite daughter’s 18th birthday?”

“I’m your only daughter, Dad,” Stiles reminded him, ducking into his outstretched arms for a hug. He pressed a kiss into her hairline.

“Happy birthday, Stiles,” he muttered as she buried her face into his shoulder.

“Thank you, Dad,” she replied.

“I unfortunately have to get to work,” he said.

“You spent all last night at work,” she whined. “It’s my birthday. Couldn’t you get this one night off?”

“Sorry, Stiles, I tried. You know I did.”

“I know,” she said, sagging against him. She was always aware of her father’s job and its constraints, how he couldn’t always be there when she wanted him to be. That’s what it meant to be a man of the law. She had wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps at one point, at many points, but she knew what that would do to her and her family if she had one. She wasn’t sure she could handle that with the same amount of grace as her father always had. “Will you be home for dinner?”

“Don’t you want to spend time with your friends?”

“Who? Them? Nah, they’ll be fine. I’m trying to get three of them to go out to dinner as a date anyway, so maybe this will give them some sort of incentive. You know?”

“I don’t even want to ask.”

“It’s better if you don’t.”

The Sheriff released her and headed back to the fridge.

“So, you want to help make some breakfast?”

Stiles grinned.

“Pancakes and eggs?”

“And sausage,” the Sheriff said with a playful smile. “The brown and serve maple kind you like from Jimmy Dean.”

She hopped excitedly beside him.

“Check the fridge,” he said. She tore into the fridge and let out a squeal.

“Is that?”

“Real maple syrup from that Upstate New York maple farm Anka is always telling you about,” the Sheriff said as Stiles scooped up the bottle from the top shelf. Rocky Knoll Maple was almost Stiles’ top favorite consumable product in the world, just after curly fries.

“You treat me so well. Thank you.”

She cradled it against her chest and pressed a kiss into his cheek.

“Only the best for my little girl,” he replied.

“I’m not so little anymore,” she reminded him.

“No, maybe not. But no matter how old you get, you’re still my little girl, okay? Nothing’s gonna change that. It’s you and me, kid.”

“Yeah, you and me,” Stiles echoed with a grin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been awful at updating this semester and I'm so sorry, guys. You're the best and you deserve better. So here's a 5k+ monster of a fluffy chapter, and next chapter is more fluff, some sad, some smut, and more fluff.   
> Love you!  
> Remember, if you want to follow me on tumblr, my url is  
> deputy-heart-eyes.tumblr.com  
> and I post a variety of ships, gifs of cats, and puns galore.
> 
> (Also, you could've had this like two-three weeks ago, but Meredith was like, this ends kind of abruptly, so I had to keep writing, and it's been like almost a month since then.)
> 
> DFTBA


	13. Chapter 13

The Sheriff left Stiles with the pack just before 2 in the afternoon, after everyone had devoured breakfast and laid lazily on the couch and floor, moaning about how full they were. He kissed her on the cheek, handed her an envelope and slipped out the door, heading for the cruiser and leaving her with a slightly-yellowed envelope, her name scribbled on the front in her mother’s handwriting.

“What’s that?” Kira asked, walking by with a glass of soda from the kitchen.

“I think it’s from my mom.”

“Really?” Scott asked, turning around and leaning over the back of the couch. “Your mom was the coolest.”

Stiles grinned and moved around the couch, falling into Isaac’s lap gracelessly.

“Okay, don’t judge me if I start bawling like a baby.”

“We would never,” Kira assured her.

“I would,” Isaac piped up.

“So would I,” Cora added.

Stiles stuck her tongue out at both of them before she tugged at the sealed flap of the envelope. She slid her finger underneath and along, gently ripping the flap off. Finally, she pulled out the letter and a burst of confetti showered over her. She laughed.

“Oh, Mom,” she sighed, grinning and unfolding the letter, more confetti spilling onto her, Isaac, and the couch. Some even fell into Allison’s lap.

 

_Stiles,_

_You’re 18 today, and I haven’t been there to watch you grow into the beautiful woman I know you are going to be. I’m not there to wake you up and sprinkle you with confetti and crawl into bed with you, like I used to do. I hope your father made you a big breakfast, and you ate so much you just want to lay down and take a nap. I hope you’re going to hang out with Scott and whatever friends you’ve made since I wrote this and give your father a hard time. I hope all these things because I cannot be there for you to make sure that they happen. Instead, baby girl, I’m gonna need you to do some things for me._

__

_ Things For Stiles To Do On Her 18th Birthday _ _(An Incomplete List by Claudia Stilinski);_

_1\. Take the $100 in this letter and buy whatever you want with it._

_2\. Go buy a scratch-off._

_3\. Go get a tattoo (yes, I know you hate needles)._

_4\. Have fun._

_5\. Get into Dad’s cabinet and drink with your friends. (DO NOT DRIVE ANYWHERE!)(And when Dad gets mad, tell him I told you to.)_

_There are so many things I wish I could tell you, and I wish I had had more time with you. I remember bringing you home from the hospital, and you were so small. You were three weeks early, and you were so tiny. The crib made you seem even smaller, so we let you sleep in the bassinet by our bed long after you should’ve. Your father was scared to hold you when you were first born. I was scared the world would take you away from me, but I never imagined the world would take me away from you._

_I want to tell you some things I know, before you go off and be an adult in the big adult world._

_ 10 Things That I Know _ _(An Incomplete List by Claudia Stilinski);_

_1\. Trust your instincts. Intuition doesn’t lie._

_2\. Accept failure as a part of the process._

_3\. How you make others feel about themselves says a lot about you._

_4\. Enjoy the little things._

_5\. When life is sweet, say thank you and celebrate._

_6\. When life is bitter, say thank you and grow._

_7\. There are plenty of ways to enter a pool. The stairs is not one of them._

_8\. Never lie to your doctor._

_9\. Be kind to customer service workers._

_10\. Buy the orange properties in Monopoly._

_I love you._

_Happy birthday, Szczepan!_

_Be good_

_-Mom_

Stiles wiped tears from her cheeks and pulled the 100 dollar bill from the envelope.

“My mom is the best.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Let’s go get a tattoo,” Stiles said.

 

-&-

 

“Stiles, are you sure about this?” Scott asked as he led her into a tattoo parlor in town. It wasn’t the same one he had went to, since he had been under 18 at the time, and therefore it was illegal for him in the first place. The pack followed, chattering in confused tones with each other.

“I’m sure. My mom wants me to do this, and I need to get over some of my fears.”

“What are you going to get?” Isaac asked, ducking over her shoulder as she stood at the counter. A woman came through the door and smiled at the group, her dark hair swept up into a long, sleek ponytail, her cat eye eyeliner smudged above her grey eyes. Her arms were covered in sleeves of tattoos, one extending onto the back of her hand.

“You’ll see,” Stiles said, leaning over and kissing his cheek.

“Hi, what can I do for you today?” the woman said.

“I want a tattoo,” Stiles answered. “Obviously. And uhh, today, if possible.”

“Well, I’m available for the next hour, if what you have in mind is small and simple.”

“It is.”

“Come with me,” the woman said, gesturing Stiles around the counter and through the door. “Uhh, your entourage has to stay out there.”

Stiles turned and gave the pack a look.

“Stay,” she said, putting her hand out.

She followed the artist into the room. There was a chair set up underneath a bright lamp, another chair against a counter, and the counter was littered with bottles of ink, lined in a messy row at the back.

“Okay, so what do you have in mind?”

Stiles took out her letter and smoothed it out, handing it to the artist.

“You want an entire letter?” the artist asked skeptically.

“Oh, no. Sorry. Just the be good and Mom, in that handwriting.”

The artist nodded and pulled out two sheets of paper, one a tracing paper and the other a printed sheet with bulleted points.

“I need you to read through this, and sign your name and date it. It’s a release form, stating you are doing this willingly and are not under the influence of anything.”

Stiles took the pen and paper offered, and skimmed through it quickly before she put down her legal name and dated it while the artist traced the letters, her mother’s handwriting staying perfectly.

“Okay, where do you want this?” the artist asked.

Stiles held out her right arm, and gestured to the inside of her lower arm. The artist pressed the tracer into her skin and pressed down before she peeled it away gently. There, in blue ink, was her mother’s real last words to her, the last new thing she’d heard from her mom.

“How does that look? There’s a mirror right there if you want to see how it looks.”

“That looks great.”

“Okay, let’s get going, then.”

The artist didn’t say much while Stiles settled into the tattoo chair, her arm resting up towards the lamp while the artist put together her gun. Finally, she shifted the rolling chair next to Stiles and smiled, snapping gloves onto her hands.

“Are you nervous?” she asked.

“Yeah, I really don’t like needles.”

“And you’re getting a tattoo?”

The kick of the gun startled Stiles, the buzzing scaring her more than most of the monsters she’d faced in a year had.

“What’s your name?” the artist asked.

“Stiles.”

“What kind of a name is that?”

Stiles laughed.

“A nickname, actually. What’s yours?”

“Rose.”

“Simple. Pronounceable. I like it.”

Stiles tried to control the jerk of her arm as the buzzing needle pressed into the fleshy part of her arm. Rose pressed her arm down easily and continued without bother.

“What’s Stiles short for?”

“Uhh, Stilinski, sort of. My first name is Polish, and I got teased a lot as a kid, so I started going by Stiles.”

“That is cool,” Rose replied. “Can I ask, what this means to you?”

She nodded towards the words she was painfully painting into Stiles.

“Uhm, my mom died, when I was young. And today’s my 18th birthday. She wrote me a letter to open today, and it just seemed right,” Stiles answered, her voice wavering. She’d been bitten by a werewolf just weeks before. She’d been possessed by a demon spirit. She’d been through hell and back, and she couldn’t handle a needle from a tattoo gun.

“That’s sweet.”

Stiles shifted in her seat, keeping her arm still.

“Breathe,” Rose reminded her. Stiles drew in a breath. “Sounds weird, but most people forget to breathe when they’re in pain, and that makes it worse.” 

Soon, Rose drew away and wiped the excess ink from Stiles’ arm, and delicately covered the new letters with ointment. She covered the area in a bandage and had Stiles follow her out of the room back to the counter. The pack was lounged on couches, flipping through magazines and portfolios. Rose walked Stiles through the proper care of her new tattoo, and Stiles paid her what was owed.

“Come again sometime,” Rose called as Stiles gestured the pack out of the parlor.

“Yeah, maybe I will.”

 

-&-

 

“Okay, it’s been an hour! Show us!” Cora demanded, tugging on Stiles’ arm after lunch at a small café in town. Stiles grinned and peeled off the bandage slowly and turned the shiny letters towards the pack. It took a moment but the pack let out a quiet, synchronized noise.

“Wow, that’s amazing,” Scott said. “She would love that.”

“Yeah,” Stiles said. “So, Cora, Kira, let’s go for a walk, okay?”

“Why?” Cora asked, narrowing her eyes suspiciously at Stiles.

“Because it’s my birthday, and I say so,” Stiles said, taking her cup of admittedly mostly flavoring latte (her father, and everyone else, joked that Stiles liked just a little coffee with her sugar) and standing up from the table. It was a mix of pumpkin and caramel and chocolate with coffee and cream, and it was utter deliciousness. “Come on.”

Cora and Kira huffed but stood and followed Stiles towards the door. She turned and winked at Scott and Isaac, who were giving Stiles an incredulous look. She whispered as she pushed open the door, “Time to make that move, boys.”

“What was that about, exactly?” Cora asked, her own black Arabica coffee held in her hand, warming her against the chilled fall air. They followed her down the street, heading towards the park.

“I’m trying to get those three together.”

“As in, _together_?” Kira asked.

“As in,” Stiles agreed.

She grinned.

“Finally!” Cora cheered brightly.

“You’re a manipulator,” Kira stated.

Stiles smiled. “I like to think of myself as an outcome engineer.”

“So, what do you want to do tonight?” Kira asked, bumping her with her elbow playfully.

“I’m gonna have dinner with my dad, and then I want to drink and have fun with my pack.”

“We can’t get drunk,” Cora reminded her.

“I didn’t say get drunk. I said drink. I just want to relax and hang out. However, I do have something that could possibly affect you.”

“How?”

“I may have asked Deaton to cook something up for my birthday,” Stiles said with a shrug and wink. “He unhappily obliged, after I begged and bothered him.”

“Wolfsbane?” Kira asked.

“Wolfsbane-infused alcohol, mostly. But I have to diffuse it, it’s a little strong right now.”

“I’m kind of looking forward to that,” Cora said with a grin. “It’s been a while since I had a good drink. Derek doesn’t really like either of us drinking, so he doesn’t keep anything like it in the loft.”

“Did you drink with your pack in South America?” Kira asked as Stiles led them to a bench and sank down onto it, despite the chill instantly biting into her jeans.

“Occasionally. It’s not something I like to do often, give up control like that. But when I feel safe, I like to relax and it feels nice. Derek’s not so,” she said and then waved her hand.

“Open to relaxation?” Stiles offered.

“Exactly,” she replied with an apologetic look.

“Seems legit.”

“What kind of dinner do you and your dad have for your birthday?” Kira asked, diverting the conversation away from Derek.

“Burgers, actually. For his birthday, he gets steak. Mine, burgers. But I get to make them as healthy or unhealthy as I please, as it is my birthday.”

“Not to hijack your birthday dinner, but can I come?” Cora asked.

“Yeah! The more the merrier!” Stiles answered. “On my mom’s birthday, we used to have the biggest party. She always loved having people over, especially when there was cake and food involved. We used to make the biggest cake every year, and she’d invite the whole neighborhood and every one from work, and our house would be filled with people from the community.”

“There wasn’t many people that this town loved more than your mother,” Cora replied. “That’s what Mom used to say.”

Stiles smiled.

“Kira, you interested?”

“Might as well,” she said. “I like burgers, and Malia isn’t home yet from her whatever with Peter.”

Stiles scrunched up her nose.

Her and Malia had been _something_ for a little while, right around the trouble with the nogitsune. There had been kissing and groping and overall testing of boundaries and sexualities, but they hadn’t lasted. Malia and Kira had become a thing, and Stiles was trying to get Derek to just get his life together enough to make out with her a little bit. But whatever Malia and she had been, it was over, and they were friends only. That meant that Peter’s persistent attempts to manipulate Malia with his paternal ties did not sit well with her.

“How’s that going, anyway?”

“I’m not allowed much of an opinion when it comes to Peter Hale,” Kira answered dryly. “But if I was, I would say that Peter should not be allowed anywhere near her, let alone taking her on one-on-one, father-daughter bonding weekends.”

 “Come on, we’ll bitch about Peter in the store. I’ve got to pick up stuff for dinner and I’m sure I have to bake my own cake again.”

 

-&-

 

“Okay, okay, but what if-” Stiles started to offer when Cora and the Sheriff booed simultaneously. “No, hear me out!”

“You’re about to offer some kind of ridiculous theory that will be half-baked and makes no sense in increasingly longwinded, run-on sentences and try to convince us that it makes more sense than the canon, and you’re going to be wrong, so don’t,” Cora said, pointing her fork full of cake at Stiles accusingly.

“But-” Stiles tried again.

“Admit defeat, Stiles,” the Sheriff said, leaning back and grinning. “Cora’s got you.”

Stiles groaned, but held her hands up in defeat.

The front door opened and Stiles leaned back in her chair to find Scott, Isaac, and Allison coming in, Isaac’s hand in Allison’s, Scott looking at Isaac like he was made of pure joy.

“Hey! The cavalry have arrived! Isaac! Tell them I’m right about the eagles in Lord of the Rings!”

“No, you’re not,” Scott piped up before Isaac could. “We’ve had this argument before. The eagles were not a taxi service!”

“And yet, they taxied Sam and Frodo out of Mordor, didn’t they?”

“Stop,” Scott said, sliding into a seat by the Sheriff. “We cannot argue about this for the fiftieth time, Stiles. Just chill on the eagles, bro.”

“That’s my cue, actually. Stiles, have fun. Don’t get into anything,” the Sheriff said, standing with his plate.

“What?”

“I’m going to bed, and I expect you have some celebrating to do that an officer of the law shouldn’t witness.”

“Dad?”

“Your mother probably suggested you get into some trouble, because that’s what your mother was good at, and I will let you get into trouble. Just be safe about it.”

With that, he took his plate into the kitchen and then slipped up the stairs to his room, leaving the pack alone with a liquor cabinet and Stiles’ vial of liquid wolfsbane mixture.

“Let’s get this party started,” Stiles said with a grin, taking the vial out of her bag by the dining room door and shaking it at her friends.

 

-&-

 

She knocked on the loft door, her skin buzzing with energy and nerves. Half of it was the couple of shots of whiskey she’d had, and half of it was a mix of dread and excitement. She wanted this. God, did she want this. She was just terrified that maybe he didn’t want this, that anything they’d had together had just been some lie.

The door slid open and Derek stared back at her, eyebrows raised at her in surprise.

“Stiles,” he said.

“Hey, can we talk?”

“I don’t thi-”

“Derek, you’re going to want to listen. Okay? This is, well, can I come in?”

Derek stepped back and let her in. She led them after Derek slid the door shut into the kitchen, a relatively safe zone. She pulled herself up onto her usual stool near the edge of the island bar, and Derek leaned against the far counter, arms crossed over his chest.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“Sex,” Stiles said.

Derek let out a spluttering cough.

“What,” he gasped.

Stiles shrugged.

“Look, when we were dating, we made a deal that on my birthday that I would come back here and there would be just you, me, and your bed for an entire night.”

“Stiles, that’s-”

“No, shut up. I get that you and I aren’t compatible emotionally. You and I aren’t dating material. But we were amazing at everything else, all the kissing and the touching. We were really good at the touching. And I am so sick of being this bumbling virgin that no one wants to look at for too long, let alone have sex with.”

“Stiles.”

“Listen, I know you could have any girl or guy you wanted with the bat of your ridiculously long eyelashes, and this may not be the best offer you’ll get this week, or even today, but it’s my birthday. And what I want is just a simple, no strings, one time, mutually beneficial round of birthday sex, because that sounds amazing to me.”

Derek didn’t interrupt, and continued to remain silent after she had finished. He couldn’t seem to form words, his mouth opening and closing, little puffs of air coming out but no words.

Stiles stood and rounded the bar to stand before him. She pressed her hand into his jawline.

“Look, you can say no. I’m an asshole, but I’m not that big of an asshole, but if you want this, I am down for this.”

Derek nodded and dropped his arms from his chest.

“I did make you a promise, didn’t I?”

He was kissing her before she could make any smart comment. Not that she could’ve formed one anyway. She had forgotten how amazing it felt for Derek to be pressed into her, for his tongue to run along her lower lip, for his hand to eclipse her hip.

“You taste like whiskey,” he murmured.

“I had a little bit to drink, before, with the pack.”

She held the back of his neck and tugged him towards her as she started to back through the kitchen.

“Where are we going?” he asked, barely breaking the kiss.

“Bed. Need to get you horizontal right now.”

Derek chuckled and leaned down to pick her up by the back of her thighs. She laughed and pressed kisses into his jawline while he carried her to the bed. He lay her down and stood back to pull off his shirt and undo his jeans. Stiles, with fumbling fingers, pulled her flannel shirt off and then her tank top. Derek pushed her easily onto her back, his mouth connecting with hers as he covered her with his body.

“This is much better,” she sighed. He hummed as he moved, leaving a trail of open mouthed kisses on her neck and down her chest. He touched the bite mark still pink and healing on her side with careful, almost reverent fingertips. “I still think there’s room for improvement, especially in the naked department.”

Derek sat back and watched intently, eyes tracking her movements as she reached behind her and popped open the clasp to her bra. She didn’t have much as far as breasts went, but she thought they were cute and perky, fun to play with. Well, she had fun playing with them. She tugged it off her arms and flung it away, baring herself to Derek.

“Jesus,” he breathed quietly, moving over her. His fingers were rough against her skin, hot against her already burning warmth. “How are you this-”

She cut him off with an unintentionally moan, his fingertips twisting her left nipple enough to start a chain reaction of sparks flowing beneath her skin. Derek closed his mouth over her other nipple, his free hand holding her down as she tried to buck up into him.

Derek was burning hot, and since the minute she had laid eyes on him in sophomore year, she had wanted nothing more than for him to touch her like this. She had fantasized long before they had ever dated, and she had not ever imagined it could be like this. She hadn’t thought it could feel like this, with tingles and heat pooling very low in her belly.

“Derek,” she gasped.

He pulled away from her, and sat back on his heels between her legs.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m right here,” he assured her, pressing a gentle kiss into her lips while he worked open her jeans. “I’ll always be right here.”

He pulled her jeans down and tossed them away, leaving her only in her giraffe underwear. Derek laughed, his fingers trailing along the lace at the top of the panties.

“What?”

“I expected Batman, actually,” he replied, nodding to her choice of undergarment.

“All of my superhero underwear are in the wash right now,” she said. “I have Batman, the Flash, the Joker, Harley Quinn, Robin, you probably don’t care.”

“No, I would love to see you in comic book underwear.”

She grinned.

“I would also love to see you out of your underwear, if you don’t mind,” he replied with a mischievous twinkle in his grey-blue-green-color-of-the-sea-after-a-storm eyes.

“Aren’t you cheeky tonight?”

He leaned in close and nipped at her jaw.

“I can smell how much you want me, and it is driving me crazy.”

Stiles lifted her hips and shimmied her underwear down her hips and off her legs. Derek hissed through his teeth, his eyes roving over her hungrily. It was cold in Derek’s loft, causing goosebumps to rise on her arms and across her stomach, her nipples to harden, and her fingers to twitch to keep blood moving. 

“I’m gonna need you to take that,” she said, gesturing to Derek’s jeans, fly open to expose his dark boxers. “And get rid of it. Unless you want me to fly solo over here.”

“I would love to see you _fly solo_ ,” he said with a smirk, pushing his jeans off and stepping out of them. “But I kind of want to get you off myself.”

Stiles sat up so fast her head swam and shimmied down the bed to sit before him, her hands ghosting over his firm muscled abdomen and resting on the waistband of his briefs. Derek held her hands still in his own for a moment, forcing his breath steady.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I haven’t,” he started but stopped, like he didn’t want to admit it.

“You haven’t in a while?”

He shook his head.

“That’s okay. I haven’t ever, so we’re kind of in the same boat. We can go slow, take our time. We’ve got all night.”

He nodded, leaning over to kiss her again, easing her onto her back. She went, but kept her hands on his waist to keep him close. Their lips moved together perfectly, like they hadn’t ever stopped kissing.

Derek Hale kissed softly, like he was afraid to break her.

Like he was afraid that she would vanish on him if pressed too hard.

Like this was their last moment together, and he didn’t want to soil it with harsh teeth and an overeager tongue.

Derek Hale kissed like Stiles had always imagined he might.

Like she dreamt about since they’d broken up.

Derek shifted his hips and his erection, hard and firm, rubbed into Stiles, causing them both to gasp and moan. Stiles tried to think of what needed to come next, besides her, but the synapses in her brain were failing to deliver anything useful except buckets of _yes_ and _more_.

“Derek, I’m gonna need you to keep that u-aaaaaah,” she moaned as he rutted into her again.

“You should hear yourself,” Derek groaned.

“What? Should I shut up?”

“No!” he replied immediately. “God, no! Don’t do that, make all the noises. I like the noises. The noises are good. Really, really fucking good.”

To prove his point almost, Derek rolled his hips, smirking as Stiles moaned and whined, pushing her hips up into him in response. She knew how wet she was, could feel the warmth and slick between her legs, and the wet spot at the front of Derek’s boxers.

“Derek, can I request that something goes a bit more south?” Stiles whimpered.

Derek’s hand disappeared from her ribs and reappeared right where Stiles wanted it, sliding up her thigh and brushing gently against her folds.

“Jesus, Stiles,” Derek cursed. “You are so wet. How-”

“I have never wanted you more than right now, so if you could get to getting,” she said, brushing her hair out of her face before sliding her hands up Derek’s arms to knot her hands in his hair.

“What happened to we have all night?” Derek asked with a mocking laugh.

“We have all night,” Stiles started. “But I really need you to touch me right now.”                     

“Like this?” Derek asked, as he pressed his finger into her clit. The noise she made was not entirely human, she didn’t think. Now, she and her lady bits were very well acquainted. She didn’t believe that girls should feel ashamed for seeking pleasure on their own. She had bought her first vibrator online when she was 16 when she was sick of overworking her one arm, her wrist starting to ache from rubbing circles so much. She knew what made her chest heave and her legs twitch, and she knew what worked but didn’t send sparks through her limbs, but god, she’d never gotten that turned on by a single touch, a single press.

“ _Yesyesyes._ ”

Sparks ignited everywhere as Derek decided that he needed to rub her clit exactly how she liked _and_ suck bruises onto her collarbone and chest. She was burning, bright like the fucking sun.

She exploded with wonderful, beautiful sensation as Derek’s thick fingers slid into her.

“Shit,” she moaned.

“Are you always this sensitive?”

“If I say pretty much, are you going to laugh and call me a virgin?”

“No?” he asked, crooking his fingers. “I like it. Besides, you are a virgin.”

Stiles gasped sarcastically, or she tried. It got lost and turned into a coughing moan as Derek twisted his fingers easily.

“Stiles, do you know how wet and ready you are for me?”

She sighed contentedly and thrust her hips down onto his fingers.

“Yeah, I really need you to fuck me, like now.”

Derek buried his head into her neck and let out the quietest of whimpers.

“We’ve talked about you not saying shit like that, Stiles.”

“No, we talked about not saying shit like that when we can’t follow through with it. Tonight, though, we can do whatever we like. You can fuck me. You can do whatever you want to me.”

She wasn’t sure if the noise Derek let out was more wolf than human, but she could bet that it was. He was snuffling into her neck and dragged his tongue over her neck, nuzzling and moving as close to her as he could get.

He pulled his fingers out of her and sat back, popping the fingers into his mouth and sucking whatever wetness Stiles had left on his skin.   

“Are you real? You can’t possibly be real.”

“Have you been eating a lot of pineapple?” Derek teased as he moved off the bed.

“That is inappropriate, Derek Silas Hale.”

“It is not inappropriate when you’re naked and I was just fingering you.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

“If you don’t like it, I’ll just put my clothes back on.”

Stiles shook her head and made grabby hands at him while Derek shuffled around in his bedside drawer for a condom. Stiles sat patiently, or as patiently as she could manage when she was horny and naked and about to lose her virginity to Derek Hale, the hottest man she had seen in her 18 years.

“You’re tapping your fingers. Are you nervous?”

“I always tap my fingers, Derek. This is how I wait. By tapping.”

Derek chuckled, his face lighting up beautifully with the warmth of happiness.

This was probably a bad idea, Stiles thought belatedly, because this was a Derek she couldn’t have. She was going to know what it’s like to have beautiful, warm, happy sex with Derek Hale, and then she was going to have to stop cold turkey.

And part of her wanted to call this off.

But then, Derek pushed his briefs down off his hips.  

Stiles had seen Scott’s dick before and Isaac’s as well, both on accident, and one of Makayla’s one-night-stand’s when he tried to make it to the next suite for clothes. Stiles didn’t want to know what Makayla and he had gotten up to that he didn’t have any sort of clothes left at the end of it. But Derek being naked was amazing. It was the most wonderful thing she had seen. She had seen him down to his boxers before, and he was practically allergic to a shirt.

But, from the waist down, Stiles was done with this man.

His cock was hard and thick, bowing up against his stomach, precum beading at the tip. Stiles had an urge to do dirty, dirty things to that boy and his cock, and she didn’t have enough time to do everything she wanted. If they lasted long enough just to have sex, they’d be lucky.

“Derek, come here,” Stiles said.

“If I come over there, things are going to get-”

“I’m kind of hoping for that.”

Derek tossed the condom onto the bed beside Stiles and crawled over her, connecting their lips again for a short kiss.

“You still want to?”

Stiles nodded enthusiastically.

“Use your words, Stiles. You’re good at talking.”

“Yes. Derek. I want this. I want you to fuck me, and make love to me, and do the sex, or whatever vernacular you want you use.”

Derek grinned.

Stiles watched without moving as Derek sat up and ripped the condom wrapper open with his teeth.                                               

“You know you probably shouldn’t do that,” Stiles said, gesturing to the condom wrapper, now discarded on the bedspread. “Lest you rip the condom.”

He rolled his eyes and rolled the condom on.

“How do you know that?”

“You think I grew up with my father and Melissa McCall and I wasn’t sufficiently lectured on proper use and care of condoms?”

“Good point.”

“And you never got a good embarrassing sex talk lecture about that?”

“Mom gave me one when I was 14.”

“And she never thought to mention that your teeth should not be used to open a condom wrapper?”

“Stiles?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you want me to fuck you, and make love to you, and do that sex?”

“Yes! I do! Come here, baby!”

Derek hovered over Stiles and pressed light, barely there kisses to her jaw and neck and along her collarbone. He shifted her legs open and then sank between them.

“Tell me if you need a minute, okay?”

“I can do that,” Stiles said, and then the blunt head of Derek’s cock pressed against her hole. She held tightly onto his arms, preparing herself.

There was a big difference between a couple of fingers, a dildo, and a hard cock moving inside her. She dragged Derek down into her for long, sloppy kisses to distract herself. Derek licked into her mouth, sliding slowly into her.

“Ahh, hold on,” Stiles whimpered.

Derek stilled and kissed her nose.

“Just relax, Stiles. I’ve got you. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I know,” Stiles whispered.

“I thought you’d be chattier than this.”

Stiles laughed and pressed a kiss to Derek’s chin.

“Let me shove something hard and dick-shaped into one of your holes and see how chatty you are,” she griped. “Just give me a couple.”

“Anything you need.”

He kissed her long and hard, one hand resting on her hip and the other on her neck. Stiles missed their kisses. She loved their kisses. Their kisses were just about the best part of their short-lived relationship.

A few minutes of increasingly insistent kisses later, Stiles pulled away and nodded.

“Yeah, okay, you can move.”

Derek started slowly, pulling back and pushing in, resting his forehead on Stiles’. He was so gentle, and knew exactly how fast he could move, and where to aim with each delicate thrust. And he got loud, startled moans when he aimed right.

“Fuuuuuck,” Stiles managed. “Okay, this is good. This is totally, totally good. Totally worth the wait to be 18. God, happy birthday to me.”

“Ahh, there’s the chatting,” Derek mumbled. “I like the chatting. You sound so good.”

“Do I?”

“Yeah, I like when you talk. Especially when your voice cracks.”

Stiles rolled her eyes and pushed at Derek’s chest.

“I want to try something.”

“What?” Derek asked, stilling.

“I want to ride you. You down?”

“So fucking down.”

They clambered around in the bed until Derek was sitting up against the headboard with Stiles sitting in his lap. She wrapped her hand around his cock and lined it up against her hole and sank down onto him with a groan.

“Fuck, okay, that feels awesome. The best idea ever. Next time, this is top of the list.”

“Next time?” Derek asked, head lolling back against the headboard.

“Oh,” Stiles said, sinking all the way down and stilling there. “I didn’t mean, I don’t know if you want a next time, but we could do this again. If you want. I mean.”

“Yes,” Derek said.

“What?”

“I want to do this again. I want a next time.”

Stiles grinned and kissed his nose this time. She started to move, rising and sinking on Derek’s cock easily, leaning into him.

“I do too.”

“Good,” Derek said with a return smile for her. “God, you look amazing.”

Stiles kissed him and Derek put his hands on her hips. She kept her pace, holding desperately onto Derek’s shoulders.

“Fuck, Derek.”

“Stiles.”

Stiles moved faster and harder, and god, what a hell of a way to lose your virginity, she thought. She watched Derek with rapt fasciation, admiring the way his eyelids fluttered and his mouth moved to form words that cut off halfway into moans and groans. His eyes seemed greener and bluer simultaneously in the lighting, and Stiles thought she saw some flickers of supernatural blue coming through.

The familiar build of pleasure in her gut made Stiles bury herself into Derek’s neck and whine for more.

“I’ve got you,” Derek assured her. “Come for me.”

“Yeah, you want that?”

“Yeah. I do.”

The only sounds in the loft Stiles could hear were the sound of their skin slapping together, like Stiles read in all her fan-fics, and their combined panting and moans. And the squeak of Derek’s bed springs.

It started slow, in her gut and then spread through her chest and into her toes and fingers, and she was crying out with Derek’s name on her tongue. She dug her fingernails into his shoulders and buried into the crook of his neck. Derek thrust up a few more times and let out his own groan as he came, burying into her in return.

“Fuck, you’re so beautiful,” he mumbled into her neck.

“Is it wrong to tell you I love you right now? Because I’ve had plenty of self-created orgasms, and that one was the best, with very little work.”

Derek laughed.

“Do you talk in your sleep, too?”

“No. Not often.”

Stiles lifted herself up off Derek and let his cock slip out of her. Derek reached down and peeled the condom off and tossed it away. He pulled her close and kissed her softly as he turned them down onto their sides. She nuzzled him and closed her eyes, enjoyed the tacky feeling of their sweat drying.

“I kind of missed you,” Stiles stated.

“You’re delirious with post-orgasm bliss.”

“Shut up,” she laughed, hitting him playfully.

“I kind of missed you, too. You’re good to have around, even if you charge headlong into danger and almost get yourself killed in every conceivable way.”

“Oh, speaking of,” Stiles said with a guilty chuckle.

“What have you done?”

“So, a couple of months ago, there were some attacks at my school-”

“And you went charging in after the danger like some daredevil.”

“No. Maybe.”

“Why? You started going by Sarah, and went to Berkeley, and you left this supernatural bullshit behind, like you don’t want to be a part of this life. And then you go running at werewolves.”

“How’d you know about Sarah?”

“Isaac.”

“Right. Isaac. Stupid chatter box.”

“Don’t blame Isaac.”

“Was he a secret spy all the time, then? Did he feed you information about my dorm, and my classes too?”

“And the part where he used my credit card for your baking obsession.”

Stiles laughed.

“That was Isaac’s idea.”

“It’s good to have you here, Stiles.”

“I know. I like having me here. Best way to spend the rest of my birthday,” Stiles said, her voice starting to slur with sleep.

“Can we talk about one more thing, before you fall asleep on me?”

“No, yes.”

“That,” he said, gesturing to the lettering on her arm. “You hate needles. You passed out when Scott got his tattoo, and almost threw up when you had to hold him down for his second attempt at the tattoo.”

“Mom wanted me to get it.”

Derek nodded and kissed her on the forehead.

“Happy birthday, Stiles. Get some sleep.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bam! Feels and smut and birthday goodness, two months later!  
> Hope you enjoyed!  
> Leave me your joys and protests.
> 
> DFTBA,  
> Your Friendly Neighborhood College Kid Kathryn


	14. Chapter 14

Stiles was assaulted with hugs as she walked through the door to their suite.   

“It was boring without you!”

“You aren’t allowed to leave that way!”

“Never again!”

“No more birthdays for you!”

Stiles laughed, wrapping her arms around Jamien individually.

“Alright! Back off, you vultures. This one is mine. My best friend. Get!”

Jamien led them into their room and let Stiles plunk her bags on the bed.

“So! There’s something different about you, Sarah.”

“Yeah? Is it that I’m a legal adult now?”

“No, that’s not it.”

Stiles shrugged and started unpacking her bags, setting her presents from Scott and the pack on her desk. There were two Pop Vinyl figures, a Batman and a Flash to sit on the top of her desk as well as the boxset of Friends, which Stiles would be spending the next few weeks binge watching instead of doing her homework or having a social life. Her dad and Melissa, though, had gotten her the best present of all. They both had pitched in to give Stiles a Visa gift card so she could buy whatever she wanted. Which, yeah, people could argue wasn’t personal enough, but when you’re in college, money for outings and food is the best gift you could ever hope for.

“I have a tattoo?”

“Yeah, I know, you Snapchatted me pictures. That’s still not it, though.”

“I’ll just let you think on that, then,” Stiles replied. “You want to order some pizza and wings before we get the girls together for homework?”

“I’m down for it.”

Jamien puzzled over it for the rest of the day, so much that Stiles could catch Jamien staring at her throughout their Study Sunday session and throughout dinner. Stiles went about her usual Sunday routine, as if she weren’t under close study and as if Derek wasn’t texting her emojis and complaining about Isaac’s socks being in the couch already.

“Where do you think we should go next weekend? I think we should take a weekend roadtrip somewhere. Go to the beach or Las Vegas or something,” Crysta offered at dinner, kicking Stiles’ chair accidentally. “Sorry.”

“Nah, bro,” she said.

“Where did that come from?” Emily asked, waving her fork at Stiles’ mouth. “That was such a dudebro thing to say.”

“My friends back in Beacon Hills, mostly. But Tumblr, too,” Stiles replied, shoving her unfortunate mess of a pita pocket taco into her mouth. Her dad hadn’t really had time to teach Stiles manners, and Melissa had given up with both her and Scott talking with their mouths full.

“You have truly disgusting eating habits,” Nathan started, staring at Stiles like she was some kind of sideshow attraction, “and it almost puts me off my appetite. You just shovel food into your mouth every minute and you barely chew before you stuff another in. It’s disturbing. How you do you expect to attract a guy that way?”

“Excuse me?” Stiles asked, mouth still full. She swallowed and stared at him, sitting across the table like he was even invited. He hadn’t been. But Nathan had a way of just _appearing_ where you didn’t want him. He tagged along with the girls, even though they had tried to shake him a couple of times.

“You heard me, Stilin-sky.”

“I get that no girl will ever put her mouth on that pathetic dick of yours, Nathan, but that doesn’t mean you get to take your sexual frustration out on me just because I won’t fuck you. Especially since you can’t even say my last name, which by the way, since we’re on the subject, is Stilinski, you uncultured swine.”

“I was just saying-”

“I don’t care what you were _just saying_. You were being rude and offensive, and you think I care whether or not the way I eat is appealing to you. I’m not trying to attract a mate when I’m eating. Strangely, I’m trying to nourish myself so I can fend off assholes like you that think I should be ladylike every second of my day so that I can be proper wife material.”

“I-”

“No. You don’t get to talk. You’ve said enough. Do you know who raised me? The Sheriff of Beacon Hills, by himself. Do you know what my dad taught me? That fuckboys like you aren’t worth my time and he also taught me how to get away with murder if such a fuckboy thought that he could tell me what I’m supposed to be. Do you understand?”

“I-”

“Good. So now you are going to get up from this table, take your food, and find somewhere where someone actually wants to eat with you. I hear the Dumpster is a good place for trash like you, right at home with the rats.”

Nathan stood on shaky legs, lifted his plate and skittered away from the table, metaphorical tail tucked between his legs.

“That was bad ass,” Meredith said with a laugh. Stiles shrugged.

“My dad didn’t actually teach me how to get away with murder, but he has offered to shoot people for me if they ever hurt me. That’s pretty damn close coming from a man of the law,” Stiles answered. She went back to stuffing her face, struggling with her pita taco that kept crumbling to pieces in her hands, while the table reenacted the entire scene and discussed various fuckboys they could unleash Stiles on.

Jamien kept staring at her, gaze unnerving as she tried to put two and two together.

Then came a text, as Stiles and Jamien were walking back from dinner with the rest of their suite surrounding them in a raucous hoard from Scott saying, **Derek is smiling. What did you do?**

Jamien peeked over her shoulder and it was then that whatever Jamien had noticed about Stiles before clicked in her mind.

“ _HOLY SHIT! YOU HAD SEX!”_ she shouted, startling half of the group.

Stiles flinched and stuffed her phone in her pocket to hide the evidence.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, even though her face was flaring with a telling blush.

“Did you have sex with your ex?” Jamien demanded, grabbing Stiles’ arm and holding her in place. A couple of passing groups gave them curious looks but didn’t stop, mostly because Erika and Meaghan were giving them glares and shooing them with their hands. “Sarah, tell me, tell me please that you did not have sex with the bastard who broke up with you.”

Stiles scuffed her feet against the pavement.

“Sarah.”

“Okay! Yes! I had sex with Derek. Is that what you want me to say? I had had a great birthday, surrounded by my best friends, and had had a little bit to drink so I was feeling bold. And I miss him. I miss him every single day, because no matter what that thick-eyebrowed hot head did to me, I still love him. And-”

“You love him?” Jamien asked in a quiet voice.

“Yes.”

“I thought you were only together for a month or two.”

“We were, but I’ve known him since I was 16. We’ve, our past is complicated, and I literally owe him my life.”

“That doesn’t mean you should go running back to him, especially because that was the first time you ever had sex.”

“What? I should wait to give my virginity to the man I marry on our wedding night? This isn’t Victorian England, and I’m not gonna apologize for having the time of my life with a guy that I enjoy being around.”

“Okay,” Jamien said.

“Okay?”

“Yeah, okay. It’s your life, Sarah, and your decisions. You get to sleep with who you want and you don’t have to prove yourself to me. That’s not what I’m here for.”

Stiles smiled and leaned into Jamien, pressing a kiss into her cheek.

“I expect details, though, because that boy is _fiiiiiine_.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less. C’mon. I have to finish up an essay for tomorrow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys!  
> College Kid Kathryn here with the penultimate chapter to this little tale! I hope you guys are enjoying this! I'll miss you guys! Be sure to visit!


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Last chapter!  
> I wanted to give you a quick warning that there is an attempted sexual assault in this chapter, so if you want to skip that because it makes you uncomfortable or triggers you, the section starts with Stiles taking a shower, and you can pick it back up with either   
> "Sheriff Stilinski," her dad picked up   
> OR the next section entirely.   
> Just wanted to keep you guys safe!  
> Enjoy!

Stiles was doing really well in her classes. She hadn’t skipped any assignments, even if she had missed class on occasion, and all of the assignments were graded in the high 90s. Midterms had gone extremely well, all of her professors reporting high As for Stiles which made Stiles wonder what was different now than in high school. On top of that, Stiles had a good standing with her professors, since she always had a question to ask them every couple of weeks at their office hours, and she had a great relationship with her suitemates and other students from her classes.

All in all, Stiles liked college. She liked being in college.

She spent most of her weekends baking cookies with Jamien or whoever else was available to keep her company. She didn’t party, but that was okay; if it wasn’t Lydia’s party, it wasn’t worth it.

She kept in constant contact with every part of the pack back home, including Liam who mostly just bragged about being the lacrosse team captain now that Scott had graduated. And Derek who hadn’t mentioned the night of her birthday but flirted with her most of the day.

 **Shouldn’t you be at work? Don’t you have plants to grow and little old ladies looking to build their gardens to flirt with?** she texted him one afternoon while she was packing her bag for her last class of the day.

 **Shouldn’t you be in class?** he replied.

She laughed and sent back, **Are you following me around again, Hale?**

“Stop flirting with your ex, Sarah,” Jamien groaned from her side of the room. “God, I can hear your smile from here and it’s disgusting. You’re disgusting. Stop it.”

 **My roommate’s jealous that you’re more attractive of any of her suitors.** Stiles sent with a grin. She scooped her keys off the desk and swept her bag onto her shoulder.

“Goodbye, lonely spinster. I’ll see you when I get home. Love you. Try not to cry yourself to sleep.”

Jamien made some obscene grumbles and shooed her out the door with an equally obscene gesture. Jamien had taken down her wall of solitude, rearranging the furniture so the space between Stiles’ side and hers was open.

**You look pretty today. ;)**

Stiles pulled the door shut behind her and headed to the elevator.

**Who taught you to use emojis, Senior Citizen Hale?**

**Also, that’s creepy.** she sent a moment later.

**Cora showed me.**

She continued the conversation even after the professor had started class. She didn’t want to stop, and she knew that was wrong, but it was like when they were dating again.

 **When you blush, the lining of your stomach also turns red** , came from Derek while Tully made some lame chemistry joke that no one understood nor cared about.

**How do you even know that?**

**I read.**

Stiles smothered a laugh in a cough and tucked her phone underneath her textbook when Tully looked directly at her. Tully turned back to his power-point and returned to lecturing on balancing formulas. She pulled her phone towards her and typed out her reply.

**The man with the longest beard in the world died because he tripped over his beard trying to run away from a fire.**

She then typed out, **Can you grow your beard that long? I kind of dig the mountain man thing.**

 **You complain about beard burn when I don’t shave for three days, Stiles. How could you handle the world’s longest beard?** Derek replied.

Stiles wrinkled her nose and replied, **There’s some places I wouldn’t mind you giving me some beard burn ;)**

She tucked her phone back under her book and returned to her notes. She ignored Derek’s response until Tully dismissed them 10 minutes after they were supposed to get out. Tully liked to hold them overtime to punish them for not being chemists and their class average being in the high 70s, which was better than most, Stiles thought.

She pulled out her phone as she was leaving and weaved through the crowd of STEM majors that were massed waiting for some STEM reception.

Derek’s reply read, **Szczepan Stilinski!**  

“Sarah! Wait up!” a voice called from behind her. She turned and found a girl from her morning English writing class, Paige jogging towards her.

“Hey! Paige! What’s up?” Stiles said, half paying attention to where she was going as she walked beside Paige and typed out her reply to Derek.

**When did you learn my first name? HOW DO YOU KNOW HOW TO SPELL IT?**

“I was wondering if you could help me out with this short story I have to write for my Experiments in Creative Writing class. I know where I want to go with it, but I don’t know if the structure is right or if the language I’m using fits the tone, and I want to get a good grade on this. I know you’re an English major, so,” Paige said, shrugging.

“I’m not an English major anymore. I’m a social welfare major. But yeah, I can help.”

“Hey, quick question. Do you know that guy over there on the steps of the library? He’s been staring at you since we walked out of the science center.”

Stiles glanced up from her phone as Derek’s reply popped up on her screen.

“Oh, that’s Nathan. He hates me because I emasculated him in front of a bunch of girls that he wanted to sleep with.”

“I’m gonna walk you back to your dorm, okay? I’d feel better that way,” Paige said, looking at Nathan as they walked and looping arms with Stiles forcefully.

“I’m not afraid of him. I’ve met meaner bunnies than him. He thinks he’s God’s gift to women, and all he is, is a quote unquote nice guy that expects girls’ panties to drop the second he looks at them.”

Paige laughed.

“You’re an incredible human being, do you know that?”

“I try.” Stiles shrugged. “So what’s the story about?”

 

-&-

 

Two weeks before finals, Stiles’ Friday class was cancelled since her professor had a family emergency, and she had the suite to herself for once. She decided to sleep in, eat a breakfast/lunch of half-stale Fritos and a half-pound Hot Pocket, and finally shave her legs after at least a month, possibly a month and a half. She didn’t really care for personal upkeep, especially when it came to shaving. Derek, being part wild animal, had never minded if her legs were hairy, so neither did she. She took her time, washing her hair and body as thoroughly as she could before she set about causing deforestation on her legs.

She finished and dried off, wrapping herself in her fluffiest towel which she had made sure to wash specifically the night before.

“Yeah, today is good!” Stiles said, running her hand over her super silky legs. She combed out her hair with her fingers and unlocked the shower stall door. She grabbed her shower caddy and headed out of the bathroom.

And there was Nathan.

He was just casually leaned against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. He watched her as she moved slowly past him.

“What can I do for you, Nathan?”

Nathan didn’t answer.

“Ooookay. I’m gonna get into my room, if you don’t mind, Creepy McCreeperton.”

Nathan stepped closer, pushing off the wall and moving towards Stiles.

“Whoa, okay, that’s not cool.”

He took another step.

“Hey, hey, dude, step back.”

Stiles was still a good five or six feet from her door and she still had to get her keys from her shower caddy and unlock the door and there was no way she could do that and fend Nathan off. He wasn’t an overly muscled guy. In fact, he was kind of a string bean. She had run over Kanima Jackson with her Jeep. She had tried to take down a massive alpha morph monster with a wooden baseball bat, and had actually saved her friends and father with a proper bat. She had punched Jackson in the face.

Her phone was in her room.

Her keys were underneath her conditioner.

Her pepper spray was in her jeans in her hamper.

“Nathan, whatever this is, it can stop,” she said.

Nathan advanced and Stiles took a step away, bumping into the wall. Allison had taught her how to defend herself, even if she forgot it whenever danger actually came around. She could swing the shower caddy or she could knee him in the balls. She did not feel safe and she wanted to get into her room without being assaulted. She should’ve kept her werewolf guard dog close, and never should’ve let Isaac go back to Beacon Hills.

He pushed into her space, his arms coming up to box her in and moving his legs in between hers so she couldn’t knee him. Stiles wasn’t a short girl by any means, but Nathan stood taller than her by quite a few inches.

She was scared.

“Nathan, stop.”

“No.”

Stiles whimpered and lifted the caddy slowly, turning her head to the side to avoid Nathan’s mouth on hers. His breath was hot and moist on her neck, made her skin crawl, and she wanted to curl up into the tightest ball possible to avoid him.

She focused not on his touch or his breath, but on menial details, on the ugly dark green pattern of the scratchy carpet beneath her feet. She focused on the splash of robin’s egg blue paint that a previous tenant had gotten just underneath the fire alarm. She focused on the yellowed light that the hallway lamp gave off, and the red of the EXIT sign vying for territory on each end of the hall.

If she didn’t, she might cry, and she needed not to cry until she was safe.

He went to push the towel out from underneath her arms, and Stiles swung the caddy heavy with big shampoo and conditioner bottles, bashing Nathan in the temple. He let out a cry and stumbled away. Stiles shoved Nathan into the wall and when he bounced back, she grabbed him by the shoulders and rammed her knee into his groan as hard as she could manage. Stiles grabbed her keys from the caddy and with shaking hands, shoved the key into her lock and let herself into her room. She collapsed just inside after she shut the door, curling in on herself.

“Bitch,” she heard Nathan cough. He stumbled away, whining and groaning with every step. She dragged herself over to her phone and dialed.

“Sheriff Stilinski,” her dad picked up.

“Hey Dad,” Stiles said quietly.

“Hey Stiles. What’s wrong?”

“I just wanted to hear your voice, that’s all. I had a bad day.”

“It’s only 1, Stiles. How could you have had a bad day?”

“Is it okay if I come home for the weekend?”

“Yeah, of course you can come home,” the Sheriff answered.

“Okay. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

“Yeah, I’ll see you then.”

She hung up and stood, knees shaking together as she dressed in her sloppiest clothes, an old shirt she stole from Scott that had at least one hole and a pair of Sheriff’s Department sweatpants. She dragged her hair up into a bun and pushed her keys into her pocket with her wallet and phone.

She sent Jamien a text as she peeked her head out of the room, **Heading home for the weekend. Watch out for Nathan, creepy af.**

She took the stairs carefully, checking to make sure Nathan wasn’t waiting on the flight below before she continued. She practically ran to the parking lot just to be safe and when she was safe inside her Jeep, her perfect, wonderful Jeep, she floored it out of Berkeley and towards Beacon Hills.

 

-&-

 

She took the steps two at a time and found herself at Derek’s loft, curling her toes against the cold stone floor as she rapped on the sliding metal door. She hadn’t remembered to grab her shoes when she left the dorm, too in a hurry to just get out, get as far away as possible, and given that she looked a little rough in her old, ratty clothes, she had gotten the weirdest looks you can get living that close to LA.

The door slid open and Derek leaned against the door frame.

“Hey,” he said quietly.

“H-hey, can I come in?” she asked, her voice shaking as the urge to cry threatened to overwhelm her. She hadn’t, yet.

“Sure, what’s wrong?”

“It’s j-just, it’s nothing.”

She walked past him and stood uncertainly by the couch. Derek pulled the door shut and walked back to her.

“Stiles, it doesn’t seem like nothing,” he said, reaching out to touch her hand. She drew back, pulling her arms into her chest.

“Please, don’t.”

He withdrew his hands respectfully.

“What happened?”

“Is Isaac here?” Stiles asked, hugging herself.

“Yeah, he’s-”

The bathroom door opened and Isaac strode out towards Stiles. She moved around the couch and let Isaac wrap her in a hug, burying herself into his chest in return.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Isaac asked, one hand casually swiping against the back of her neck to scent mark her. “Whose ass do I have to kick?”

“No one’s,” Stiles mumbled into his shirt. “Just this guy.”

Isaac walked them slowly to the couch and sank down, curling Stiles in his lap with ease.

“I pissed him off because,” she said, lifting her head out of his chest and sniffling, trying to keep the tears at bay. “Well, I pissed him off and he decided to catch me after I got out of the shower, and I’m just so tired of being scared of everything. And I’m angry that I’m scared because I’ve seen worse than a boy standing in my suite, and I shouldn’t be scared, but I am. And now it’s not just druids and kanimas and hunters and fucking nogitusunes to worry about and be afraid of.”

Her voice was shaking and tears dripped steadily down her face.

“It’s the boy in the next suite or my classmate walking back from class, and it never occurred to me that this could’ve happened to me. I didn’t know I had to be scared of this, and it terrifies me to think that I won’t be able to stop it next time.”

“Stiles, you’re stronger than you think. And Allison taught you self-defense last year.”

Stiles shook her head, and wiped furiously at her tears.

“I’m just so sick of being the victim, of people looking to hurt me to get something out of it. I don’t want this anymore.”

Isaac pulled her close again and she couldn’t stop herself from sobbing into him. His touch was gently and familiar, the least threatening brushes of hands on her back and arms. Her chest hurt and her eyes ached, and all she wanted was to fall asleep. But there was a familiar tightness to the ache in her chest and a quickness to her breath.

“Fuck,” she whimpered.

“Stiles, your heartbeat is,” Isaac started.

“She’s having a panic attack,” Derek said from nearby. He appeared in Stiles’ periphery, blurry as little oxygen was getting to her system. He crouched down and held his hand out. “Is it okay if I touch you, Stiles?”

She nodded.

He touched her arm, gently before he and Isaac moved her off the couch and onto the floor beside Derek.  

“Breathe in through your nose,” Derek directed. “One, two, three, four, five. Okay, breathe out through your nose. One, two, three, four, five.”

He settled Stiles between his legs and pressed his hand into her stomach to hold her against him.

“This sucks,” she whimpered.

“I know. It sucks, and that’s okay,” he said, his face pressed into her shoulder. “You’ll get through it. You’re strong and you’re capable of getting through this.”

“I want it to stop.”

“It will.”

She kept timing her breaths with Derek’s, focusing on the feeling of Derek’s hand on her stomach and his warmth against her back. It took just under 10 minutes for it to disperse, and Derek held her even afterwards. She didn’t want to move, too comfortable and warm, even with the ache still in her chest from the lack of air in her lungs.

“People suck,” Stiles finally said quietly. “I want pumpkin pie.”

“I don’t think we have pumpkin pie,” Isaac replied. “Do you want to make a pumpkin pie?”

“Yeah, I want to make a pumpkin pie. Let’s, let’s do that.”

 

-&-

 

“I’m back,” Stiles called out when she let herself into her room.

“Yo, are you okay? What do you mean to watch out for Nathan?”

“He’s just creepy as fuck.”

“I gathered from your text. What’d he do?”

Stiles shut the door and pulled Derek’s shirt over her head, tossing it towards her bed where she was most definitely going to cuddle with it later. She changed into her own shirt and sank onto her bed.

“He was angry, and he attacked me when I was coming back from my shower,” Stiles muttered.

“He what? I’ll be right back.”

“Jay, no. Jaaaaaaaaay,” Stiles whined, reaching for Jamien as she headed for the door.  “Noooooooooooo.”

“Stay. I’ll be right back.”

Jamien slipped out the door and shut it behind her. Stiles stayed on the bed but listened as there was knocking on every door in the suite followed by a murmur and an angry exclamation. She was pretty sure that her available suitemates had formed a mob, all making rabble noises as they flowed out of the suite and towards Nathan’s room.

Stiles got up out off the couch and followed the mob to the lounge of Nathan’s suite, leaning against the brick wall. Jamien pounded on the door and stood back as it opened.

“Hey Benjamin. Your good pal Nathan home?”

“Yeah,” Ben replied cautiously.

“Good, can you have him exit the room, please? We have a bone to pick with him.”

“Okay?”

Nathan stepped out of the room and Ben shut the door behind him, leaving Nathan with a mob of angry college girls.

“Hi Nathan. You hurt my friend. And I’m not okay with that.”

“I didn’t-”

“I don’t care what you have to say. I don’t like you, Nathan. You hurt my Stilinski and you will have to pay for that. I don’t like when people hurt my Stilinski. My Stilinski is fragile and if you ever,” she said, shoving him back against the door, “touch my Stilinski in a way that she doesn’t ask for, I will rip you apart one slow limb at a time.”

“I never-”

“Stop. No. She said you did, and my Stilinski doesn’t lie. So listen here,” she growled and leaned in close to whisper in Nathan’s ear. She, not for the first time, wished she could hear like Scott or Derek. She wanted to be able to hear whatever Jamien was threatening him with. Jamien stepped away from Nathan and winked at him. “You understand? Because you see this group right here?’

The group was Stiles’ entire suite and then some, all spread out along the corridor of Nathan’s suite.

“They will hurt you if you don’t comply. This is a lot of angry girls. Don’t piss them off any more than you already have.”

 

-&-

 

 “I don’t wannaaaaaaaaaa,” Stiles whined, twirling around in her chair.

“Do your homework, for the love of God,” Jamien groaned from her side of the room. “You need to edit your portfolio and you need to do it now.”

“Nooooooooooooo.”

“Sarah, your portfolio is due tomorrow, and you’ve barely touched it. Now if you don’t do your homework, I’m not going to go to that dumb one-person band show with you.”

Stiles frowned and went back to her portfolio laid out in a thick stack on her desk. She had to pick her three best letters and rewrite them to use what she learned over the semester as well as what she learned about herself, and then write an essay citing those letters and she wanted to cry. Her portfolio was going to kill her and this was the first of many semesters.

At least she was doing something she really wanted to do next semester.

She was headed in the right direction now, and that was worth something.

She just had to get through this motherfucking portfolio edit.

“I want to print an extra copy and then shred it and then burn the shreddings.”

“You’re extremely overly dramatic,” Jamien replied.

“Only when I hate something extremely overly lots.”

“I’ll take you to Jimmy’s Jimmies if you get it done before dinner,” Jamien offered.

“But-”

“Portfolio done by dinner and you can get all the Raztastic Swirl you want, my treat.”

Stiles turned back to her portfolio and started leafing through it.

“What are jimmies?” Stiles asked, a second later.

“What?”

“Jimmy’s Jimmies.”

“What?”

“What are the jimmies that Jimmy claims to sell?”

“They’re sprinkles. Chocolate sprinkles. It’s an east coast thing, I guess. I don’t know.”

Stiles ducked her head and started pouring over her letters. She pulled out her letter to her mom, her best and most heartfelt and she had had so much to say. She shuffled the pile and picked out Scott’s letter next, since she had revealed how hard it was to be apart from her brother after all the years they’d only had each other. She only needed one more.

She pulled Derek’s letter out of the pile and reread it slowly. She had been harsh with him, and she knew as she read it that Derek could _never_ see it. Her professor had even written on the side of the paper how mean-spirited the message was, how it evoked the perfect sense of hurt and anger and the lesson she had learned from this experienced was real and relatable. He hadn’t particularly enjoyed her anecdote about her first period and how she had hidden it from her father and bled through her favorite pair of pants at the age of eleven because she’d been trying to pass a wad of toilet paper off for a pad. He’d scribbled along the edge that it wasn’t really that relevant and seemed to be there more for shock value.

It wasn’t.

She had planned on continuing the anecdote with the first time that Stiles had cramps while they were dating, and Derek had pressed his hand lovingly into her belly and leeched the pain away, his grey-blue-green eyes staring at her like she was the most wonderful thing in the world. He had ordered too much take-out of pizza and wings, and had snuggled her while they watched the Mummy movies, even the shitty sequels. It had been the best first day of her period in the 74 times that she’d had it, and it still was 7 times since.

But she hadn’t wanted to talk about Derek’s hand on her belly because that meant she would have to face the fact that he had lied while they were lying together, and lied while he looked at her like that, and she couldn’t do that. She had called him an actor and a liar in her letter, and she hadn’t wanted to think about how he had acted so well while they were together.

She’d seen it before, his acting skills.

He walked into the Sheriff’s station and flirted with one of the Sheriff’s deputies, flipping a switch from sour and brooding to charming and smiley like it was nothing.

She had been dumb to think he had any feelings for her if he were capable of something like that, or at least, that’s what she had written back then. She had been angry, hurt, bitter, and she lashed out when she was hurt. It wasn’t a pretty characteristic but she hadn’t ever prided herself on being “pretty” or a “lady.” She was a woman, but that did not mean she had to be feminine. She didn’t have to conform to the wills of society and its heavy expectations.

She reached the end where she wondered why he had ever gone along with the whole thing in the first place. Derek’s tongue was as sharp as hers. He wasn’t known to hold back. He spoke up when he thought she was being dumb or endangering her life. He chided her for getting into harm’s way, since she didn’t heal like the pack could.

So why had he?

It wasn’t to spare her feelings. They’d never done that. Their fights were loud and epic, and they never pulled their punches.

It was odd, really. One minute Derek was running across town to save Stiles from a rabid omega, and the next he was claiming he wasn’t happy with her. It was as if he was-

The thought trailed off in her own mind.

“Oh, I am going to kill him.”

 

-&-

 

She passed all of her finals, her portfolio had been a hit with her professor, and Stiles was finally home for the winter break, her first semester of college under her belt. She didn’t so much unpack as she did fling her suitcase on her floor and unzip it, pulling out two bags, one for Isaac, and one for Scott. She grabbed a slice of pizza from the fridge, planned to discuss the state of the fridge and its contents with her father, and headed for the McCall household.

Isaac and Scott were making out on the couch when Stiles let herself in.

“Ew,” she said tossing their presents onto Isaac’s back.

“Go away,” Isaac grumbled, raising his head to glare at Stiles who simply plopped onto the loveseat near the couch.

“Well, that’s no way to greet someone, Lahey.”

“I didn’t barge in on you and Derek making out at the loft!” Isaac protested.

“Yes, you did. You’d walk in and tell us to stop being gross. This is my payback. Stop being gross and pay attention to me.”

Scott sat up first, dragging Isaac with him and offering him a small kiss as a platitude.

“Don’t worry, she’ll go away sooner if we just listen to her.”

“Wow, what a way to treat your oldest and dearest friend, McCall.”

Scott just fixed her with a look.

Stiles replied with her own.

“Guys, can we stop the conversational stares thing? It’s confusing to the rest of us,” Isaac stated, shifting the bags from behind him and into their laps.

“I just came over here to give you your presents and ask for confirmation on a theory I have, and then I’ll get out of your hair so you can return to your dry humping on Melissa’s couch.”

Scott wrinkled his nose at the mention of his mother.

“What’s your theory?” Isaac asked.

“Open your presents first.”

Scott and Isaac tore into their bags, pulling out their gifts. Stiles had had an impressive amount of money left over from her book advance from financial aid as well as from selling her textbooks back to the bookstore, so she used those combined to buy everyone presents. Her dad had a University of Califonia Berkeley Dad sweatshirt waiting on the desk in his office. She’d bought Isaac a scarf with Oski the Bear, Berkeley’s mascot sewn into the soft fabric, and Scott a Beat Stanford shirt.

“This is great, Stiles. Thank you,” Scott said, holding the shirt up to his chest to show Isaac. “What’s the occasion?”

“I just wanted to thank you for being so okay with all of the shit I’ve been through these last couple months, from the break up to getting bit to what happened with Nathan. I ignored you guys and then came running to you for comfort the minute something spooked me, and you were cool with it. That’s all I can ask for in a friend, so thanks.”

“Stiles, we’ve been friends since we were 4. I’m not gonna let you dangle just because you didn’t want to see anyone for a while. Being dumped hurts. You’re my best friend, through everything. Right, Isaac?”

“Yeah, what he said!” Isaac said enthusiastically. Stiles laughed and tucked her hair behind her ear.

“Okay, so what’s your theory?” Scott prompted.

“It has to do with Derek breaking up with me, actually.”

Scott and Isaac glanced at each other.

“I was thinking about it, and I can’t believe it took me this long to even question it, but not even a week before we broke up, I was chased through the woods by an omega. We were happy together, and then my life was in danger. Derek didn’t contact me for five days, and then he suddenly didn’t want to be with me. So, conclusion, he broke up with me because he wanted to keep me safe.”

Isaac sighed, shook his head, and said, “I told him you’d figure it out.”

“You knew?” Stiles asked.

“Of course, I knew. I was there when the pack threatened to take you because Derek had killed their pack mate.”

“He what?”

“That night in the Preserve, he killed that omega, Stiles.”

Stiles sat for a second in silence.

“Wow. This is more complicated than I thought.”

“No, it’s not,” Scott offered. “Look, Derek just wanted to keep you safe. That’s all he’s ever wanted to do. He goes about it the entirely wrong way, but he has his heart in the right place. He wants to protect you, and he thought that by not being associated with him, the omega pack would leave you alone. Obviously, he was wrong.”

“Obviously,” Stiles said, self-consciously touching the bite mark on her side. She wasn’t sure how she had really explained it to Jamien when she saw it. There was a bunch of mumbling and stuttering, and she might’ve claimed it was a dog who attacked her.

“Just go talk to him,” Isaac suggested.

“I don’t know,” Stiles said.

“Stiles, you love talking and arguing. Go talk, and yell, and get Derek back so we can have this pack in one piece. Please,” Scott said. “Also, so I can go back to making out with my boyfriend.”

“Alright, I’m going. Have fun. Wear protection. Don’t let Melissa walk in on you in the throes of passion.”

“You’re a disgusting human being,” Isaac called as Stiles stood up and headed for the door. “And I hate you.”

“I’ll take back your scarf, Isaac Jonathan.”

“No.”

Stiles grinned as she pulled the door shut behind her.

 

-&-

 

She let herself into the loft and called out Derek’s name.

“What’s up?” Derek asked, leaning out of the kitchen doorway.

“You had no right to break up with me for the reason you broke up with me.”

“Uhm,” Derek said slowly. “Yes, I did?”

“No. Because you lied to me. You aren’t allowed to break up with me with a lie,” Stiles demanded. “If you actually weren’t happy with me, then I could accept that. But you were. You and I were great together, and you don’t get to break up with me under the pretense of us not being great together.”

“Stiles-”

“No, let me talk. You broke up with me because you wanted to protect me. That’s okay. But you don’t get to tell me that we weren’t happy. I want you to tell me exactly why you broke up with me. The truth this time.”

“You were in danger. I put you in danger.”

Stiles sank onto the couch.

“You made me miserable.”

“I know,” he said, coming to sit next to her. “They threatened you. I killed that omega on accident that night, and they wanted to murder you. I couldn’t, I couldn’t let that happen. I care too much for you.”

“Then, why did you push me away? There’s no way to protect me when you push me away like that. You’re so dumb. You’re the dumbest person ever,” Stiles replied, moving closer to him.

“I am. Yeah.”

“Why did you say you weren’t happy? Why was that the reason you chose?”

Derek stared at his feet.

“It’s the only thing that would get you to go.”

Stiles climbed into Derek’s lap and kissed him softly.

“Stiles.”

“I love you.”

He stopped.

“What?”

“I love you. I know we broke up, and we never said it before, but you make me feel amazing, and not just sexually.”

Derek wrapped his arms around her waist and dragged her flush against him, burying his face in the valley between her breasts.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know,” she said, dragging her hands along his neck. “I’m still alive. I’m here.”

They sat like that for a while, the sun’s shadows moving across the loft until it sank below the mountain ridge.

“Can we go lay on the bed? This is starting to hurt my knees,” Stiles said. Derek grinned, secured his hands underneath her legs and stood, lifting her with him. He laid her down on the comforter before moving to lock the loft door and shut the lights off.

“Why’d you want me back, after what I did?”

His back was to her while he turned off the overhead lamp, which was barely more than a lightbulb hanging from the ceiling.

“Because in relation to other things that people have done to me, Derek, that was nothing. Literally. It was literally nothing.”

Derek came back to the bed, climbing in with her and flopping on his stomach beside to her. She turned onto her side and watched him, his head buried into the space between two pillows, his ears the only thing visible besides his mop of hair. She reached out and took a chunk of his hair, brushing it out before beginning to braid it. He lifted his head just enough to peek out over the pillow.

“What’re you doing?”

“Braiding your hair.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s there. Put your head back down.”

He obliged and she went back to braiding.

“You need to cut your hair, dude,” she stated.

“Why?” he asked, voice muffled in the pillows.

“You’re starting to reach Dad Hair lengths, and I can’t date Dad Hair Derek. I won’t do it.”

He laughed and rolled onto his side.

“Okay, I see how it is. You only like me for my looks.”

“Obviously. God, you’re lucky you’re pretty,” she said, grinning at him. “But jokes aside, there is more to you than just how pretty you are. Although, you are unfairly attractive.”

He returned to laying on his stomach and let her play with his hair as she liked. She braided several ropes and then braided those together. He hummed appreciatively when she scratched her nails gently against his scalp, and mumbled incoherently when she ran her hand up his nape and into the thickest part of his hair.

“There’s this quote,” Stiles started. Derek raised his head and cocked an eyebrow at her. “And I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently. It’s by Sarah Williams, but it’s accredited to Galileo, but whatever. It’s part of her poem The Old Astronomer to His Pupil. The last line is I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”

“Okay?”

“You asked me, a while ago, why I went looking into Berkeley’s werewolf attacks if I don’t want to be part of this world anymore, and that’s not why I chose Berkeley. I like our lives, Derek. I like that you all are these preternatural bad asses. I’m not too keen on having to run for my life, but you know, it comes with the territory. And I’ve got the best bodyguards in the world, if any creatures of the night should come after me. It’s not all bad, you know, and it took me too long to figure that out.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night, Derek,” Stiles repeated, brushing a piece of his hair away from his eyes. “This life, with werewolves and kitsunes and banshees has brought me some of the best people and the best times that I could ever imagine. I could never leave it behind just because a few baddies have hurt me. Scott, the pack, _you_ mean too much to me to just walk away. You’re the stars that make me less afraid of the dark.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's it, kids. That's the end of Stiles' journey this time around. I hope you enjoyed it and you'll check out my other fics. I've got two other girl!Stiles fics, and a couple stereks, as well as other pairings. 
> 
> DFTBA,  
> Kayti <3


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